Creating JSON on the fly with JObject

Question

For some of my unit tests I want the ability to build up particular JSON values (record albums in this case) that can be used as input for the system under test.

I have the following code:

var jsonObject = new JObject(); jsonObject.Add("Date", DateTime.Now); jsonObject.Add("Album", "Me Against The World"); jsonObject.Add("Year", 1995); jsonObject.Add("Artist", "2Pac"); 

This works fine, but I have never really like the "magic string" syntax and would prefer something closer to the expando-property syntax in JavaScript like this:

jsonObject.Date = DateTime.Now; jsonObject.Album = "Me Against The World"; jsonObject.Year = 1995; jsonObject.Artist = "2Pac"; 

Answer 1

Well, how about:

dynamic jsonObject = new JObject(); jsonObject.Date = DateTime.Now; jsonObject.Album = "Me Against the world"; jsonObject.Year = 1995; jsonObject.Artist = "2Pac"; 

Answer 2

You can use the JObject.Parse operation and simply supply single quote delimited JSON text.

JObject  o = JObject.Parse(@"{   'CPU': 'Intel',   'Drives': [     'DVD read/writer',     '500 gigabyte hard drive'   ] }"); 

This has the nice benefit of actually being JSON and so it reads as JSON.

Or you have test data that is dynamic you can use JObject.FromObject operation and supply a inline object.

JObject o = JObject.FromObject(new {     channel = new     {         title = "James Newton-King",         link = "http://james.newtonking.com",         description = "James Newton-King's blog.",         item =             from p in posts             orderby p.Title             select new             {                 title = p.Title,                 description = p.Description,                 link = p.Link,                 category = p.Categories             }     } }); 

Json.net documentation for serialization