How to avoid _metadata in a REST response (listData.svc)

Question

I am pulling data from a SharePoint list with listData.svc, and _metadata represent more than half of the response content.

Is there a way to return list fields only, without the metadata?

Below an example in JSON format, atom has a similar issue. What I really want is the data in bold.

{ "__metadata": { "uri": "http:/.../_vti_bin/listdata.svc/Contacts(2988)", "etag": "W/\"3\"", "type": "Microsoft.SharePoint.DataService.ContactsItem" }, "Contact": "christophe", "EmailAddress": "christophe@usermanagedsolutions.com", "Account": { "__metadata": { "uri": "http://.../_vti_bin/listdata.svc/Accounts(5570)", "etag": "W/\"5\"", "type": "Microsoft.SharePoint.DataService.AccountsItem" }, "Account": "Car Rental Inc" } }

Answer 1

Well, I am not absolutely sure, but I think the answer is: there is no way to skip metadata property. You may of course create a kind of proxy by implementing a custom web service which itself consumes listdata.svc and truncates the "__metadata" property? But it doesn't sound good to me.

You can of couse skip all other unnecessary properties by defining the properties in an explicit way:

/_vti_bin/listdata.svc/Contacts()?$select=Contact,Account

But I suppose, you already do this.

This metadata biest is still there. I hope someone can disprove my answer :)

Answer 2

This is a shot in the dark. As you said in your comment, you are building pages dynamically. I am not sure about this, but, I tend to think that if you have a view for the page that the data will be returned OUTSIDE of the metadata as you would expect. I have experienced this with lists.asmx, in that, field/column information or metadata would be returned in metainfo columns. If the fields were present in a view, then these fields were not apart of the metainfo columns. For my unique case, I created a specific view for my scenario, so my particular fields would appear normally in my response results. Again, my scenario has to do with lists.asmx, and I wonder if this could be similar. I wish I could give something concrete, but like I mentioned in the beginning, it is a shot in the dark.

If my theory is correct, verify that the view for this page contains the fields that you want returned in the results.