BizTalk Pipeline Components Extensions Utility Pack: JSON Encoder Pipeline Component

At the beginning of this week, I ask on twitter what should be the topic of my next blog posts: BizTalk Server and JSON support or Azure Logic Apps. And the majority of the replies was: BizTalk Server and better JSON support.

For that reason, I will respect my reader’s decision and I will be releasing today a new addition to my BizTalk Pipeline Components Extensions Utility Pack community project for BizTalk Server 2016: Custom JSON Encoder Pipeline Component.

You may be asking yourself: this component already exists by default in BizTalk Server 2016, so why we need another?

Yes, Microsoft provides out-of-the-box a JSON Encoder to transform the XML messages into a JSON message and sends it out. But, unfortunately, in some cases, it doesn’t work as you should expect to work and it will fail, in my case with this error:

Reason: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key

And in reality what I just want is a simple way, that, I hope, it would work for all scenarios (aka XML messages) in a simple and effective way.

JSON Encoder Pipeline Component

The Custom JSON Encoder is a pipeline component for BizTalk Server which can be used in a Send Pipeline (Encode stage) to encode any XML message into a JSON equivalent in a simple and effective way.

Because I would like to have a choice between using the default pipeline component provide by Microsoft, at least the internal behavior, this pipeline component is an extension of the default JSON Encoder pipeline component and fully compatible with it and you will be able from the BizTalk Administration console you will be able to decide if:

• You want to use the behavior of the default JSON Encoder pipeline component provide by Microsoft by setting the UseCustomEncoder property to False;

• or use the custom behavior to generate the JSON message by setting the UseCustomEncoder property to True;

What is BizTalk Pipeline Components Extensions Utility Pack?

BizTalk Pipeline Components Extensions Utility Pack is a set of custom pipeline components (libraries) with several custom pipeline components that can be used in received and sent pipelines, which will provide an extension of BizTalk out-of-the-box pipeline capabilities.

The project is available on the BizTalk Server Open Source Community repository on GitHub (https://github.com/BizTalkCommunity), and everyone can contribute with new pipeline components that can be extended or improve the existing BizTalk Server capabilities.

At the moment it is only available for BizTalk Server 2016, but it will soon be compiled and available for previous versions of the product.

Where to download it?

You can download BizTalk Pipeline Components Extensions Utility Pack from GitHub here:

BizTalk Pipeline Components Extensions Utility Pack
GitHub