Strange content in JSON deserialization result

Question

Given this request DTO

public class CreateRecordRequest {
    public Dictionary<string, object> Record { get; set; }
}

when I call the service passing this JSON

{
    "Record": {
        "File": {
            "name": "DSC_3493_4_5.jpg",
            "extension": ".jpg",
            "size": 596002,
            "rawFile": {}
        },
        "Notes": "",
        "Type": ""
    }
}

File has the deserialized value "{". Since ServiceStack has no way of knowing which object File maps to, I'm curious why it doesn't deserialize it as a dictionary ("{" is inexplicable). What is the easiest way to customize deserialization of a single value like this? I'm working with Kendo's upload control and this is the JSON it submits.

Answer 1

Because it's an object the Serializer doesn't know what type to dehydrate this into, you can force it to use a Dictionary<string,string> with:

JsConfig.ConvertObjectTypesIntoStringDictionary = true;