Jquery $.ajax() call to pass associative array with other params to MVC controller failing

I have a generic dispatcher that takes in parameters and then make $.ajax() As you can see, I am looping through the parameters to build the data.

function dispatch(controller, action, param1, param2,...) {
    var args = '', pg = 1, id = '';
    var l = arguments.length;
    var data = {};
    for (var i = 2; i < arguments.length; i += 2) {
        data[arguments[i]] = arguments[i + 1];
    }            

    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "/" + (controller + "/" + action,
        data: data,
        dataType: "json",
        success: function (res) {
            alert('success');
        },
        error: function (xhr, status, error) {
   开发者_开发问答         alert('error!');
        }
    });
}

This is how I call:

dispatch("XYZ", "AddGuests", "id", 10, "name", "Bob");

Everything works as expected and I get all parameters back in my MVC 3 controllers. Now I need to pass multidimentional associative array as parameter to my controller. I want to use the single generic dispatcher I use for other calls. But somehow I am getting null for the associative array parameter.

Basically I want to post a guests array to my controller's List parameter.

Code to prepare the associative array data:

var guest = {};
var guests = [];

for(var i=0;i<2;i++){
  var name = GetName();
  var email = GetEmail();
  guest = { 'Email': email, 'Name': name };
  guests.push(guest);
}

End of the loop would give me, say:

{
 {'Email':"bob@zyz.com", 'Name':"Bob"},
 {'Email':"tom@zyz.com", 'Name':"Tom"}
}

This is the new call to the dispatcher:

dispatch("XYZ", "AddGuests", "id", 10, "guests", JSON.stringify(guests));

This is my controller:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult AddGuests(string id, List<SelectedGuest> guests){
    //save guests
}

[Serializable]
public class SelectedGuest
{
    public string Email { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

When I look at httpfox I see correct values posted:

id  10
guests  [{"Email":"bob@zyz.com","Name":"Bob"},{"Email":"tom@zyz.com","Name":"Tom"}]

If I do this, I get the guest passed correctly to my controller: But this limits me to pass just the guests array not other parameters.

data = JSON.stringify(guests);

What I am doing wrong? Thanks for reading.

---

If using JSON.stringify(guests) works, why not combine it into another JSON object with your other parameters that don't need stringification?

data = { "id": 10, "Guests": JSON.stringify(guests) };

Alternatively, you could construct a javascript object that combines these and call stringify on that.