Store Hardcoded JSON string to variable

Question

I'm having an issue storing this json string to a variable. It's gotta be something stupid I am missing here

private string someJson = @"{     "ErrorMessage": "",     "ErrorDetails": {         "ErrorID": 111,         "Description": {             "Short": 0,             "Verbose": 20         },         "ErrorDate": ""     } }"; 

Answer 1

You have to escape the "'s if you use the @ symbol it doesn't allow the \ to be used as an escape after the first ". So the two options are:

don't use the @ and use \ to escape the "

string someJson = "{\"ErrorMessage\": \"\",\"ErrorDetails\": {\"ErrorID\": 111,\"Description\":{\"Short\": 0,\"Verbose\": 20},\"ErrorDate\": \"\"}}"; 

or use double quotes

string someJson =@"{""ErrorMessage"": """",""ErrorDetails"": {""ErrorID"": 111,""Description"": {""Short"": 0,""Verbose"": 20},""ErrorDate"": """"}}"; 

Answer 2

First things first, I'll throw this out there: It's for this reason in JSON blobs that I like to use single quotes.

But, much depends on how you're going to declare your string variable.

string jsonBlob = @"{ 'Foo': 'Bar' }"; string otherBlob = @"{ ""Foo"": ""Bar"" }"; 

...This is an ASCII-encoded string, and it should play nicely with single quotes. You can use the double-double-quote escape sequence to escape the doubles, but a single quote setup is cleaner. Note that \" won't work in this case.

string jsonBlob = "{ 'Foo': 'Bar' }"; string otherBlob = "{ \"Foo\": \"Bar\" }"; 

...This declaration uses C#'s default string encoding, Unicode. Note that you have to use the slash escape sequence with double quotes - double-doubles will not work - but that singles are unaffected.

From this, you can see that single-quote JSON literals are unaffected by the C# string encoding that is being used. This is why I say that single-quotes are better to use in a hardcoded JSON blob than doubles - they're less work, and more readable.