How to write JSON string value in code?

Question

I want to store the following string in a String variable

{"Id":"123","DateOfRegistration":"2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30","Status":0}

This is the code I use ..

String str="{"Id":"123","DateOfRegistration":"2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30","Status":0}";

.. but it's showing error ..

Here it's pretty obvious but for the next question you should detail what error it's showing. It's the kind of precious information helping those wanting to help you. — Guillaume, Nov 21 '12 at 08:40

Freak · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-21T08:39:31.197

You have to do this

String str="{\"Id\":\"123\",\"DateOfRegistration\":\"2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30\",\"Status\":0}";

Please see this for reference
Also from msdn :)

Short Notation  UTF-16 character    Description
\'  \u0027  allow to enter a ' in a character literal, e.g. '\''
\"  \u0022  allow to enter a " in a string literal, e.g. "this is the double quote (\") character"
\\  \u005c  allow to enter a \ character in a character or string literal, e.g. '\\' or "this is the backslash (\\) character"
\0  \u0000  allow to enter the character with code 0
\a  \u0007  alarm (usually the HW beep)
\b  \u0008  back-space
\f  \u000c  form-feed (next page)
\n  \u000a  line-feed (next line)
\r  \u000d  carriage-return (move to the beginning of the line)
\t  \u0009  (horizontal-) tab
\v  \u000b  vertical-tab

Thanks for this. If you've got a big JSON that you need to escape, use this tool: https://onlinetexttools.com/escape-text — Xonshiz, Dec 08 '21 at 10:05

Mohammad Nikravan · Answer 2 · 2023-02-10T06:49:55.883

44

C# 10 and lower

I prefer this; just make sure you don't have a single quote in the string.

 var str = "{'Id':'123','DateOfRegistration':'2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30','Status':0}"
              .Replace("'", "\"");

C# 11 and upper

You can simply put your json inside a pair of triple double-quote: """

var str = """
    {
        "Id": "123",
        "DateOfRegistration": "2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30",
        "Status": 0
    }
""";

edited Feb 10 '23 at 06:49

answered Mar 01 '17 at 06:11

Mohammad Nikravan

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2

That's not valid JSON though – mcont Nov 27 '18 at 19:40
1

@mcont why it is not valid? – Mohammad Nikravan Nov 27 '18 at 23:06
3

Because JSON requires strings to be wrapped with quotation marks (`"`) and not apostrophes (`'`). As far as I know most JSON parsers are quite strict about this – mcont Nov 28 '18 at 12:02
18

@mcont, Yes, definitely it must be a double quote not a single quote, that's why I append Replace ("'", "\"") at end. – Mohammad Nikravan Nov 28 '18 at 16:40
3

@MohammadNikravan The problem with that is that if you have any single quotes in the string then it will produce unexpected results – Ruzihm Mar 10 '21 at 16:28
6

@Ruzihm Yes, that's why I mentioned to make sure there is no single quote. – Mohammad Nikravan Mar 10 '21 at 20:07

score 25 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 16 '21 at 04:11

25

Finetuning on sudhAnsu63's answer, this is a one-liner:

With .NET Core:

string str = JsonSerializer.Serialize(
  new {    
    Id = 2,
    DateOfRegistration = "2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30",
    Status = 0
  }
);

With Json.NET:

string str = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(
  new {    
    Id = 2,
    DateOfRegistration = "2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30",
    Status = 0
  }
);

There is no need to instantiate a dynamic ExpandoObject.

edited Nov 16 '21 at 04:11

Pang

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answered Oct 28 '20 at 18:23

Youp Bernoulli

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4

This is very clever. I think it's much cleaner than all the brute force string manipulations and escape sequences. I'll be using this method in my automated web API tests to build the sample request body. – Matthew MacFarland Jul 30 '21 at 15:22
1

Great answer, but imo second suggestion is for Newtonsoft.Json. And first is for Json.NET – Eugene Zakharov Jan 12 '22 at 08:24
@EugeneZakharov Json.NET ↔ Newtonsoft – Youp Bernoulli Jan 12 '22 at 21:48
A nested demo version of this would be even better :) – OJB1 Aug 26 '22 at 20:47
True @OJB1 But only Javascript nested/inline snippets are possible!? ☝ – Youp Bernoulli Aug 29 '22 at 07:53

score 14 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 16 '20 at 11:30

14

There is an alternate way to write these complex JSON using Expando object or XElement and then serialize.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/csharpfaq/2009/09/30/dynamic-in-c-4-0-introducing-the-expandoobject/

dynamic contact = new ExpandoObject
{    
    Name = "Patrick Hines",
    Phone = "206-555-0144",
    Address = new ExpandoObject
    {    
        Street = "123 Main St",
        City = "Mercer Island",
        State = "WA",    
        Postal = "68402"
    }
};

//Serialize to get Json string using NewtonSoft.JSON
string Json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(contact);

edited Aug 16 '20 at 11:30

ice1e0

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answered Jun 03 '18 at 17:04

sudhansu63

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1

This approach worked quite well for me because I was writing unit tests for code that had to read in JSON files with various data conditions in them. This gave me a lightweight and readable(!) way of creating a base object that I could easily reconfigure and tweak parameters on per test. – Bernard Hymmen Aug 14 '18 at 21:09
4

How did you manage to initialize the ExpandoObject this way? What I get: 'ExpandoObject' does not contain a defintion for 'Name' etc. – Youp Bernoulli Oct 28 '20 at 15:30
Reading this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7478048/why-cant-i-do-this-dynamic-x-new-expandoobject-foo-12-bar-twelve explains that it is not possible!? – Youp Bernoulli Oct 28 '20 at 18:08

score 14 · Answer 5 · answered May 30 '21 at 10:25

With Verbatim String Literals (@"...") you can write inline multi-line json by swapping double quotes with pairs of double quotes - "" instead of ". Example:

string str = @"
{
    ""Id"": ""123"",
    ""DateOfRegistration"": ""2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30"",
    ""Status"": 0
}";

score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 21 '12 at 08:32

7

You have to escape the quotes within the string like this:

String str="{\"Id\":\"123\",\"DateOfRegistration\":\"2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30\",\"Status\":0}";

answered Nov 21 '12 at 08:32

KeyNone

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Indeed, @MikeBarnes, but if you look closely at the timestamp you will see that my answer was posted 3 secs earlier - so please remove your comment and downvote. – KeyNone Aug 15 '13 at 09:46

score 7 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 18 '22 at 18:39

C# 11 introduces a new feature named Raw string literals. It makes working with JSON very easy. Just enclose the string using not one but three double quote characters (""") as markers:

string str = """{"Id":"123","DateOfRegistration":"2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30","Status":0}""";

Related YouTube video by Nick Chapsas: Strings in C# 11 just got a whole lot better.

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 21 '12 at 08:32

2

you need to escape the inner quotes like so:

String str="{\"Id\":\"123\",\"DateOfRegistration\":\"2012-10-21T00:00:00+05:30\",\"Status\":0}";

answered Nov 21 '12 at 08:32

Brian

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Peter Shen · Answer 9 · 2021-05-04T02:13:35.213

1

For an out-of-box thinking solution, I encoded the JSON to base64 so it can be imported as a string value in one line.

This preserves the line formatting without you having to write dynamic objects or escape characters manually. The format is the same as if you read the JSON from a text file:

var base64 = "eyJJZCI6IjEyMyIsIkRhdGVPZlJlZ2lzdHJhdGlvbiI6IjIwMTItMTAtMjFUMDA6MDA6MDArMDU6MzAiLCJTdGF0dXMiOjB9";
byte[] data = Convert.FromBase64String(base64);
string json = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data);

//using the JSON text
var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<object>(json);

edited May 04 '21 at 02:13

answered May 04 '21 at 02:08

Peter Shen

141
2

It might just be me, but I struggle to sight transpose the base64 encoding into json, making it a bit harder to tell what's going on in the code. Maybe others are more mentally adept than me. – Josh Gallagher Sep 22 '22 at 17:59

How to write JSON string value in code?

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