ASP.NET JSON Web Service Response format

Question

I have written one simple web service which get product list in JSONText which is string object

Web Service code is below

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Services;
using System.Web.Script.Services;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Json;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;

/// <summary>
/// Summary description for JsonWebService
/// </summary>
[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
[System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService]
public class JsonWebService : System.Web.Services.WebService 
{

    public JsonWebService () {

        //Uncomment the following line if using designed components 
        //InitializeComponent(); 
    }

    [WebMethod]
    [ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json)]
    public string GetProductsJson(string prefix) 
    {
        List<Product> products = new List<Product>();
        if (prefix.Trim().Equals(string.Empty, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            products = ProductFacade.GetAllProducts();
        }
        else
        {
            products = ProductFacade.GetProducts(prefix);
        }
        //yourobject is your actula object (may be collection) you want to serialize to json
        DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(products.GetType());
        //create a memory stream
        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
        //serialize the object to memory stream
        serializer.WriteObject(ms, products);
        //convert the serizlized object to string
        string jsonString = Encoding.Default.GetString(ms.ToArray());
        //close the memory stream
        ms.Close();
        return jsonString;
    }
}

now it give me resoponse like below :

{"d":"[{\"ProductID\":1,\"ProductName\":\"Product 1\"},{\"ProductID\":2,\"ProductName\":\"Product 2\"},{\"ProductID\":3,\"ProductName\":\"Product 3\"},{\"ProductID\":4,\"ProductName\":\"Product 4\"},{\"ProductID\":5,\"ProductName\":\"Product 5\"},{\"ProductID\":6,\"ProductName\":\"Product 6\"},{\"ProductID\":7,\"ProductName\":\"Product 7\"},{\"ProductID\":8,\"ProductName\":\"Product 8\"},{\"ProductID\":9,\"ProductName\":\"Product 9\"},{\"ProductID\":10,\"ProductName\":\"Product 10\"}]"}

But i am looking for below out put

[{"ProductID":1,"ProductName":"Product 1"},{"ProductID":2,"ProductName":"Product 2"},{"ProductID":3,"ProductName":"Product 3"},{"ProductID":4,"ProductName":"Product 4"},{"ProductID":5,"ProductName":"Product 5"},{"ProductID":6,"ProductName":"Product 6"},{"ProductID":7,"ProductName":"Product 7"},{"ProductID":8,"ProductName":"Product 8"},{"ProductID":9,"ProductName":"Product 9"},{"ProductID":10,"ProductName":"Product 10"}]

can any one tell me what is actual problem

Thanks

Answer 1

First there was a change with ASP.NET 3.5 for security reasons Microsoft added the "d" to the response. Below is a link from Dave Ward at the Encosia that talks about what your seeing: A breaking change between versions of ASP.NET AJAX. He has several posts that talks about this that can help you further with processing JSON and ASP.NET

Answer 2

Actually, if you just remove the

[ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json)] 

from the method, and you return the jsonString that you serialized using the JavaScriptSerializer you will get exactelly the output that you were looking for.