Media Type Formatters

Media Type Formatters are responsible of deserializing the HttpRequestMessage body into a object that will be used as an input in a controller action. It is also responsible for serialize the object returned in the HttpResponseMessage according to the MIME type set in the Accept Header.

ASP.NET Web API ships with two media type formatters: XmlMediaTypeFormatter and JsonMediaTypeFormatter.

Additional formatters in WebApiContrib

WebApiContrib contains the following media type formatters:

• BsonMediaTypeFormatter
• HtmlMediaTypeViewFormatter
• JavaScriptSerializerFormatter
• JsonpMediaTypeFormatter
• MessagePackMediaTypeFormatter
• ProtoBufFormatter
• RazorViewFormatter
• ServiceStackTextFormatter
• XlsxMediaTypeFormatter

Registering a media type formatter to be used by ASP.NET Web API

To register a formatter to be used in ASP.NET Web API, add it to the Formatters collection in the GlobalConfiguration object.

protected void Application_Start()
{
    GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.Add(new ServiceStackTextFormatter());
   
   // other registrations (routes, areas, global filters, etc)
}