How to convert an object in C# to JSON

While working on one of my favorites eMagid projects – rentalengine, one of our technicians had to deal with a small hurdle – How to convert custom object into JSON, so it can be consumed by our rich JavaScript UI.

The solution is actually way more simple than you’d imagine – There is a built it serializer just for that in the System.Web.Script.Serialization namespace.

So… let’s see it in action :

First – let’s built our object:

[Serializable()]
public class MyObject {
    public string StringField { get; set; }

    public int[] Numbers { get; set; }

    public String[] Names { get; set; }

}

Now the fun part – Convert to JSON

Step 1. Import the namespace

using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

Step 2. Let’s JSON it!

JavaScriptSerializer o = new JavaScriptSerializer();
string json = o.Serialize(Images);

Is that all???

YES! that’s all. You just converted your object (custom, ADO, Linq object, or otherwise) to JSON!!