Formatted Json escapes non-ASCII characters in Dashboard

[Victor-johnsson]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Describe the bug

Hello!

When I serialize an object with System.Text.Json using

var options = new JsonSerializerOptions
{
  WriteIndented = true,
  Encoder = JavaScriptEncoder.UnsafeRelaxedJsonEscaping,
};
var json = JsonSerializer.Serialize(record, options);
logger.LogInformation("Unicode characters: {unicode}", json);

I expect the log entry parameter 'unicode' to contain the raw characters (åäöÅÄÖ) in the Aspire Dashboard.
Instead when viewing the Format JSON in the Aspire Dashboard it shows them as \u00E5\u00E4\u00F6\u00C5\u00C4\u00D6.

The unformatted view show the raw characters.

Expected Behavior

I expect the Format JSON view in the Dashboard to show raw characters for non-ASCII characters, when logging a serialized object.

Steps To Reproduce

I've created a minimalistic aspire project here!

When starting the program, just browse to the Api project. This will log out a the json string of a serialized object with some Swedish characters.

The endpoint is "/".

Exceptions (if any)

No response

.NET Version info

.NET SDK:
Version: 9.0.203
Commit: dc7acfa194
Workload version: 9.0.200-manifests.5063bca7
MSBuild version: 17.13.20+a4ef1e90f

Runtime Environment:
OS Name: ubuntu
OS Version: 24.04
OS Platform: Linux
RID: linux-x64
Base Path: /home/victor/.dotnet/sdk/9.0.203/

.NET workloads installed:
There are no installed workloads to display.
Configured to use loose manifests when installing new manifests.

Host:
Version: 9.0.4
Architecture: x64
Commit: f57e6dc747

.NET SDKs installed:
8.0.404 [/home/victor/.dotnet/sdk]
8.0.407 [/home/victor/.dotnet/sdk]
9.0.100 [/home/victor/.dotnet/sdk]
9.0.200 [/home/victor/.dotnet/sdk]
9.0.202 [/home/victor/.dotnet/sdk]
9.0.203 [/home/victor/.dotnet/sdk]

.NET runtimes installed:
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 8.0.10 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 8.0.11 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 8.0.13 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 8.0.14 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 9.0.0 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 9.0.2 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 9.0.3 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 9.0.4 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 8.0.10 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 8.0.11 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 8.0.13 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 8.0.14 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 9.0.0 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 9.0.2 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 9.0.3 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 9.0.4 [/home/victor/.dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]

Other architectures found:
None

Environment variables:
DOTNET_ROOT [/home/victor/.dotnet]

global.json file:
Not found

Learn more:
https://aka.ms/dotnet/info

Download .NET:
https://aka.ms/dotnet/download

Anything else?

I'm not sure if this is considered a bug or if this is how it is intended to work! But stumbled on it when trying to log some serialized objects which contained Swedish characters such as åäö!

Other info:
I'm running this via the aspire cli, in ubuntu 24.04.01 running in WSL.

[Victor-johnsson]

Did some investigating in where the formatting was handled and found it in TextVisualizerDialog.razor.cs

One solution could be to set a JavaScriptEncoder to the JsonWriterOptions in the method FormatJson.

It could look something like this:

        using var writer = new Utf8JsonWriter(
            stream,
            new JsonWriterOptions
            {
                Indented = true,
                Encoder = JavaScriptEncoder.Create(
                    UnicodeRanges.BasicLatin,
                    UnicodeRanges.Latin1Supplement
                ),
            }
        );

Though this might raise the question on what UnicodeRanges should be used?

I've created a fork here with this solution.
But I'm not sure if this would be an acceptable solution!