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
– Guillaume, Commented Nov 21, 2012 at 8:40

Mohammad Nikravan · Accepted Answer · 2025-02-12 19:47:32Z

61

C# 11 and upper

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

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

C# 10 and lower

Use single quotes and replace them afterward; Make sure you don't have a single quote in the original string.

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

edited Feb 12 at 19:47

answered Mar 1, 2017 at 6:11

Mohammad Nikravan

1,8792 gold badges21 silver badges25 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

6 Comments

mcont Over a year ago

That's not valid JSON though

mcont Over a year ago

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

Mohammad Nikravan Over a year ago

@mcont, Yes, definitely it must be a double quote not a single quote, that's why I append Replace ("'", "\"") at end.

Ruzihm Over a year ago

@MohammadNikravan The problem with that is that if you have any single quotes in the string then it will produce unexpected results

Mohammad Nikravan Over a year ago

@Ruzihm Yes, that's why I mentioned to make sure there is no single quote.

|

Freak · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-21 08:39:31Z

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: onlinetexttools.com/escape-text

Pang · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-16 04:11:30Z

31

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, 2021 at 4:11

Pang

10.2k146 gold badges87 silver badges126 bronze badges

answered Oct 28, 2020 at 18:23

Youp Bernoulli

5,7047 gold badges45 silver badges63 bronze badges

6 Comments

Matthew MacFarland Over a year ago

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.

Eugene Zakharov Over a year ago

Great answer, but imo second suggestion is for Newtonsoft.Json. And first is for Json.NET

Youp Bernoulli Over a year ago

@EugeneZakharov 👍🏼 Json.NET ↔ Newtonsoft

OJB1 Over a year ago

A nested demo version of this would be even better :)

Youp Bernoulli Over a year ago

True @OJB1 👍🏼 But only Javascript nested/inline snippets are possible!? ☝🏼

|

mrówa · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-30 10:25:20Z

17

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
}";

answered May 30, 2021 at 10:25

mrówa

5,8013 gold badges29 silver badges40 bronze badges

Comments

ice1e0 · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-16 11:30:47Z

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, 2020 at 11:30

ice1e0

1,0268 silver badges17 bronze badges

answered Jun 3, 2018 at 17:04

sudhansu63

6,2204 gold badges41 silver badges55 bronze badges

3 Comments

Bernard Hymmen Over a year ago

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.

Youp Bernoulli Over a year ago

How did you manage to initialize the ExpandoObject this way? What I get: 'ExpandoObject' does not contain a defintion for 'Name' etc.

Youp Bernoulli Over a year ago

Reading this: stackoverflow.com/questions/7478048/… explains that it is not possible!? 🤔

Theodor Zoulias · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-18 18:39:19Z

9

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.

answered Apr 18, 2022 at 18:39

Theodor Zoulias

45.9k8 gold badges111 silver badges154 bronze badges

Comments

KeyNone · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-21 08:32:48Z

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, 2012 at 8:32

KeyNone

9,2804 gold badges36 silver badges52 bronze badges

1 Comment

KeyNone Over a year ago

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.

Brian · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-21 08:32:51Z

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, 2012 at 8:32

Brian

4104 silver badges12 bronze badges

Comments

Peter Shen · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-04 02:13:35Z

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 4, 2021 at 2:13

answered May 4, 2021 at 2:08

Peter Shen

1471 silver badge2 bronze badges

1 Comment

Josh Gallagher Over a year ago

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. 😉

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to write JSON string value in code?

9 Answers 9

6 Comments

2 Comments

6 Comments

Comments

3 Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Comments

1 Comment

Linked

Hot Network Questions