How to handle data from httpclient

Question

I'm working on a new Windows Phone 8 app. I'm connecting to a webservice which returns valid json data. I'm using longlistselector to display the data. This works fine when i'm using the string json in GetAccountList(); but when receiving data from the DataServices class i'm getting the error "Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Threading.Tasks.Task'to string". Don't know what goes wrong. Any help is welcome. Thanks!

DataServices.cs

    public async static Task<string> GetRequest(string url)
    {
        HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient();

        await Task.Delay(250);

        HttpResponseMessage response = await httpClient.GetAsync(url);
        response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
        string responseBody = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
        Debug.WriteLine(responseBody);
        return await Task.Run(() => responseBody);
    }

AccountViewModel.cs

 public static List<AccountModel> GetAccountList()
    {
        string json = DataService.GetRequest(url);
        //string json = @"{'accounts': [{'id': 1,'created': '2013-10-03T16:17:13+0200','name': 'account1 - test'},{'id': 2,'created': '2013-10-03T16:18:08+0200','name': 'account2'},{'id': 3,'created': '2013-10-04T13:23:23+0200','name': 'account3'}]}";
        List<AccountModel> accountList = new List<AccountModel>();

        var deserialized = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<IDictionary<string, JArray>>(json);

        JArray recordList = deserialized["accounts"];


        foreach (JObject record in recordList)
        {
            accountList.Add(new AccountModel(record["name"].ToString(), record["id"].ToString()));
        }

        return accountList;
    }

UPDATE: I changed it slightly and works like a charm now. Thanks for your help! DataServices.cs

     //GET REQUEST
    public async static Task<string> GetAsync(string url)
    {
        var httpClient = new HttpClient();

        var response = await httpClient.GetAsync(url);

        string content = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

        return content;
    }

AccountViewModel.cs

    public async void LoadData()
    {
        this.Json = await DataService.GetAsync(url);
        this.Accounts = GetAccounts(Json);
        this.AccountList = GetAccountList(Accounts);
        this.IsDataLoaded = true;
    }

    public static IList<AccountModel> GetAccounts(string json)
    {
        dynamic context = JObject.Parse(json);

        JArray deserialized = (JArray)JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(context.results.ToString());

        IList<AccountModel> accounts = deserialized.ToObject<IList<AccountModel>>();

        return accounts;
    }

    public static List<AlphaKeyGroup<AccountModel>> GetAccountList(IList<AccountModel> Accounts)
    {
        List<AlphaKeyGroup<AccountModel>> accountList = AlphaKeyGroup<AccountModel>.CreateGroups(Accounts,
                System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture,
                (AccountModel s) => { return s.Name; }, true);

        return accountList;
    }

Answer 1

That line is your problem:

return await Task.Run(() => responseBody);

Did you try that? :

return responseBody;

Try this too:

public async static List<AccountModel> GetAccountList()
{
    string json = await DataService.GetRequest(url);
    ...
}