How do I get formatted JSON in .NET using C#?

Question

You are going to have a hard time accomplishing this with JavaScriptSerializer.

Try JSON.Net.

With minor modifications from JSON.Net example

using System;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace JsonPrettyPrint
{
    internal class Program
    {
        private static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Product product = new Product
                {
                    Name = "Apple",
                    Expiry = new DateTime(2008, 12, 28),
                    Price = 3.99M,
                    Sizes = new[] { "Small", "Medium", "Large" }
                };

            string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(product, Formatting.Indented);
            Console.WriteLine(json);

            Product deserializedProduct = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Product>(json);
        }
    }

    internal class Product
    {
        public String[] Sizes { get; set; }
        public decimal Price { get; set; }
        public DateTime Expiry { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }
    }
}

Results

{
  "Sizes": [
    "Small",
    "Medium",
    "Large"
  ],
  "Price": 3.99,
  "Expiry": "\/Date(1230447600000-0700)\/",
  "Name": "Apple"
}

Documentation: Serialize an Object

A shorter sample code for Json.Net library

private static string FormatJson(string json)
{
    dynamic parsedJson = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(json);
    return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(parsedJson, Formatting.Indented);
}

If you have a JSON string and want to "prettify" it, but don't want to serialise it to and from a known C# type then the following does the trick (using JSON.NET):

using System;
using System.IO;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

class JsonUtil
{
    public static string JsonPrettify(string json)
    {
        using (var stringReader = new StringReader(json))
        using (var stringWriter = new StringWriter())
        {
            var jsonReader = new JsonTextReader(stringReader);
            var jsonWriter = new JsonTextWriter(stringWriter) { Formatting = Formatting.Indented };
            jsonWriter.WriteToken(jsonReader);
            return stringWriter.ToString();
        }
    }
}

Shortest version to prettify existing JSON: (edit: using JSON.net)

JToken.Parse("mystring").ToString()

Input:

{"menu": { "id": "file", "value": "File", "popup": { "menuitem": [ {"value": "New", "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"}, {"value": "Open", "onclick": "OpenDoc()"}, {"value": "Close", "onclick": "CloseDoc()"} ] } }}

Output:

{
  "menu": {
    "id": "file",
    "value": "File",
    "popup": {
      "menuitem": [
        {
          "value": "New",
          "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"
        },
        {
          "value": "Open",
          "onclick": "OpenDoc()"
        },
        {
          "value": "Close",
          "onclick": "CloseDoc()"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

To pretty-print an object:

JToken.FromObject(myObject).ToString()

Oneliner using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq:

string prettyJson = JToken.Parse(uglyJsonString).ToString(Formatting.Indented);

All this can be done in one simple line:

string jsonString = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(yourObject, Formatting.Indented);

Here is a solution using Microsoft's System.Text.Json library:

static string FormatJsonText(string jsonString)
{
    using var doc = JsonDocument.Parse(
        jsonString,
        new JsonDocumentOptions
        {
            AllowTrailingCommas = true
        }
    );
    MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
    using (
        var utf8JsonWriter = new Utf8JsonWriter(
            memoryStream,
            new JsonWriterOptions
            {
                Indented = true
            }
        )
    )
    {
        doc.WriteTo(utf8JsonWriter);
    }
    return new System.Text.UTF8Encoding()
        .GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());
}