Difference between ReadAsAsync and JsonConvert

Question

This works for all properties:

string resultAsString = await httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
return await Task.Factory.StartNew(() => JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ApiData>(resultAsString));

while this works only for some of them:

return await httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsAsync<ApiData>();

what is the difference?

Answer 1

The former reads asynchronously from the stream, and then uses a thread-pool thread to deserialize the JSON string to an object.

The latter reads asynchronously from the stream, but transforms the JSON string to an object synchronously, on the thread in which resumed after awaiting the asynchronous read from the stream.

Internally, both methods will utilize Json.NET to parse the data, as the extension method HttpContentExtensions.ReadAsAsync<T> will internally call the JsonMediaTypeFormatter, which uses Json.NET.

Personally, I'd use the latter, as I see no benefit in executing the serialization on a background thread. But, test your code and see if that works for you.