JsonConvert.DeserializeObject and "d" wrapper in WCF

Question

By default WCF service wrap JSON response in "d" wrapper and there I found a problem with parsing it.

If I parse with JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(response) where response is

"{\"d\":\"{\"a0b70d2f-7fe4-4aa2-b600-066201eab82d\":\"Thelma\",\"d56d4d4f-6029-40df-a23b-de27617a1e43\":\"Louise\"}\"}"

I gor an Error:

After parsing a value an unexpected character was encoutered: a. Line 1, position 9.

If I change response into

"{\"a0b70d2f-7fe4-4aa2-b600-066201eab82d\":\"Thelma\",\"d56d4d4f-6029-40df-a23b-de27617a1e43\":\"Louise\"}"

I got it working.

So how to parse this "d" wrapped JSON responses from WCF services? Is there any better way to parse JSON?

Answer 1

Looks like you're using the enableWebScript behavior on your webHttpBinding. You should probably be using the webHttp behavior instead- this gives you "clean" JSON instead of the ASP.NET AJAX client JSON.

Answer 2

Now I got rid of "d" wrapper with Regex.Replace and fix JSON response with proper structure

{\"Guid\":\"a0b70d2f-7fe4-4aa2-b600-066201eab82d\",\"Name\":\"Thelma\"}
{\"Guid\":\"d56d4d4f-6029-40df-a23b-de27617a1e43\",\"Name\":\"Lousie\"}\"}

I also make a class with Guid and Name, defined as string in it.

Then try to deserialize it with

List<myStruct> o = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<myStruct>>(response);

But i get an error

Expected a JsonObjectContract or JsonDictionaryContract for type 'System.Collections.Generic.List`1[mynamespace.myStruct]', got 'Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonArrayContract'.

Where is the trick?