JSON Serialization/Deserialization in C#

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You don’t need to download an additional library to serialize/deserialize your objects to/from JSON. Since .NET 3.5, .NET can do it natively.

Add a reference to your project to “System.Web.Extensions.dll”

Let’s look at this example JSON string:

1

{

2	"some_number": 108.541,

3	"date_time": "2011-04-13T15:34:09Z",

4	"serial_number": "SN1234"

5

}

You can deserialize the previous JSON into a dictionary like so:

1	using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

2

3	var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();

4	var dict = jss.Deserialize<Dictionary<string,string>>(jsonText);

5

6	Console.WriteLine(dict["some_number"]); //outputs 108.541

So what if your JSON is a bit more complex?

1

{

2	"some_number": 108.541,

3	"date_time": "2011-04-13T15:34:09Z",

4	"serial_number": "SN1234"

5	"more_data": {

6	"field1": 1.0

7	"field2": "hello"

8

}

9

}

Deserialize like so…

1	using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

2

3	var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();

4	var dict = jss.Deserialize<Dictionary<string,dynamic>>(jsonText);

5

6	Console.WriteLine(dict["some_number"]); //outputs 108.541

7	Console.WriteLine(dict["more_data"]["field2"]); //outputs hello

The field “more_data” gets deserialized into a Dictionary<string, object>.

You can actually just just deserialize like so:

1	using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

2

3	var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();

4	var dict = jss.Deserialize<dynamic>(jsonText);

5

6	Console.WriteLine(dict["some_number"]); //outputs 108.541

7	Console.WriteLine(dict["more_data"]["field2"]); //outputs hello

And everything still works the same. The only caveat is that you lose intellisense by using the “dynamic” data type.

Serialization is just as easy:

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print?

1	using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

2

3	var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();

4	var dict = jss.Deserialize<dynamic>(jsonText);

5

6	var json = jss.Serialize(dict);

7	Console.WriteLine(json);

Outputs…

1

{

2	"some_number": 108.541,

3	"date_time": "2011-04-13T15:34:09Z",

4	"serial_number": "SN1234"

5	"more_data": {

6	"field1": 1.0

7	"field2": "hello"

8

}

9

}