Check if a response string is a JSON Object or an XML?

Question

C# code to check if a response string is a JSON Object or an XML?

I am trying this :

string responseString = jQuery.parseJSON(response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result);

But this will throw an exception if the result is not a valid JSON object. ( This is returning XML content for me, in some cases) I want to avoid exception handling. Is there any method which returns bool to check if this is valid json or not?

Answer 1

Check the content type of the response message.

if (response.Content.Headers.ContentType.MediaType == "application/json")
{
    // parse json
}
else
{
    // parse xml
}

You can also read the first character from the response. If it's a XML content, you should find a <. Even if the XML declaration is present or not.