Using System.Net.IpAddress as complex type in oData model but serializing/deserializing as string

[Christian Baker]

I have a model that is using System.Net.IpAddress and need the odata web service to serialize/deserialize it as a string and not a comples type. How would I do that? It doesn't know what to do with the IpAddress by default.

public class TestModel
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public IPAddress Ipaddress { get; set; }
    }

public class EdmModel
    {
        public IEdmModel GetEdmModel()
        {
            var builder = new ODataConventionModelBuilder();

            var ip = builder.ComplexType<IPAddress>();
            //ip.Ignore(i => i.Address);
            ip.Ignore(i => i.AddressFamily);
            ip.Ignore(i => i.IsIPv4MappedToIPv6);
            ip.Ignore(i => i.IsIPv6LinkLocal);
            ip.Ignore(i => i.IsIPv6Multicast);
            ip.Ignore(i => i.IsIPv6Teredo);
            ip.Ignore(i => i.IsIPv6UniqueLocal);
            ip.Ignore(i => i.ScopeId);

            var model = builder.EntitySet<TestModel>("TestModel").EntityType;
            model.ComplexProperty(p => p.Ipaddress).IsRequired();

            return builder.GetEdmModel();
        }
    }

[Juliano Leal Goncalves]

Duplicate of:

• #732

TL;DR it's not trivial, but also not impossible. I've not yet done it myself as the opportunity hasn't come up again (when I asked that question I was in a different company/project where I was looking to add some custom types to our OData service).

[Sam Xu]

@ChesireFreeThrow

Couple ways:

1. Extra property mapping

You can define an extra string property as:

public class TestModel
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string IpAddressStr {  get => Ipaddress.ToString(); set => Ipaddress = value.ToIpAddress(); }
    public IPAddress Ipaddress { get; set; }
}

When doing model builder, exclude 'Ipaddress' from Edm model, rename 'IpAddressStr' as 'Ipaddress'.

2. Define a customized Edm Type.
   You can refer to my sample at:
   https://github.com/xuzhg/WebApiSample/tree/main/v8.x/CreateNewTypeSample

3. Customize "IODataTypeMapper". (I haven't had sample to test it, if needed, I can try it later)

[Christian Baker]

@xuzhg Thanks!
I was trying to avoid the first one but I'll try the other two out