Provide a way to configure how byte[] is serialized

[chrischu]

It would be awesome if there was an easy way to configure how byte[] is serialized. As far as I know by default byte[] is serialized as a Base64-encoded string, however, we would prefer if the byte[] is serialized as JSON array instead. We know we can use a custom JsonConverter, but it seems odd that this (at least in our mind) very peculiar behavior cannot be configured in an easier way.

There are several reasons for this wish:

• We like the symmetry with other array types
• If we omit the type name when having a property with a declared type of IReadOnlyList<byte> and an actual type of byte[] it would still work, while it does not work when the byte[] is serialized as string, since the deserializer cannot infer that the string actually represents bytes.

Is there already an easy way to configure the byte[] serialization behavior we don't know of?

[JamesNK]

JsonConverter is how you do this. Adding a setting to customize how every type is serialized isn't reasonable.

[chrischu]

Maybe not every type, but every type that is handled unexpectedly? There are settings for how DateTimes are serialized aren't there?