PATCH returns data:[] relationships

When I patch to an endpoint the relationship returns data: [], which isn’t always true. For example, if I had ingredients and recipes, I query for recipes?include=ingredients and I will get the included ingredients as expected.

However, if I PATCH to recipe, the relationship returns an empty array, even though relationships exist For example:

{  
   "data":{  
      "attributes":{  
         "id":203,
         "title":"Cake",
      },
      "relationships":{  
         "ingredients":{  
            "links":{...},
            "data":[ ] <------- Shouldn't be empty or present?
         }
      },
      "type":"recipes",
      "id":"203"
   }
}

In my case I’m building an ember app, so ember thinks that the relationships just magically disappear and content on the page will disappear on update.

[joshhubers]

@jaredcnance Thanks for the test. The test ran fine and looks like the situation I was having.

Turns out there was an initializer in the default constructor, assigning an empty list to the property.

i.e.

public Person()
{
  TodoItems = new List<TodoItems>();
} 

So the serializer believed that there was a relationship with no data.

[jaredcnance]

@joshhubers actually, I’m unable to repro. Can you take a look at the test here:

https://github.com/json-api-dotnet/JsonApiDotNetCore/pull/332/commits/d9d1f659f672070268066bd59184772eb810ea89#diff-3291fcbe5d589cd25e4f538a16f78aadR148

And let me know if you’re doing something different? Are you updating the relationship in the PATCH request?