JSON.NET Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Compact Framework

Question

Can I use JSON.NET in Visual Studio 2008 with .NET 3.5 Compact Framework? And how can I install/Configure it in the IDE? I've searched the internet but could not find it.

I found this NuGet Support for Visual Studio 2008 to try install JSON.NET through NuGet but could not get it working. The result of this tutorial was an error Unable to find package 'your.package.name':

Answer 1

I don't think NuGet will help you here. Json.NET removed support for the .NET 3.5 Compact Framework in release 4.0.1, as is stated in the 4.0.1 release notes:

Other major changes in this release are two new builds and the removal of an existing build. Removed is Compact Framework. VS2010 no longer supports Compact Framework so 3.5 r8 will be its last release if you are targeting the Compact Framework.

The most recent version of Json.NET that does support it is 3.5.8, which you can download manually from here:

https://github.com/JamesNK/Newtonsoft.Json/releases/download/3.5.8/Json35r8.zip

Having manually downloaded Json35r8.zip, you can unzip the file, navigate to Json35r8\Bin\Compact, and manually add a reference to Newtonsoft.Json.Compact.dll using the Add Reference dialog box.

Note that Json.NET 3.5.8 is old enough that some basic things are broken. See e.g. JSON.net CF 3.5, verify that JSON is complete for an example.