Unexpected character encountered while parsing value

Question

Currently, I have some issues. I'm using C# with Json.NET. The issue is that I always get:

{"Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: e. Path '', line 0, position 0."}

So the way I'm using Json.NET is the following. I have a Class which should be saved. The class looks like this:

public class stats
{
    public string time { get; set; }
    public string value { get; set; }
}

public class ViewerStatsFormat
{
    public List<stats> viewerstats { get; set; }
    public String version { get; set; }

    public ViewerStatsFormat(bool chk)
    {
        this.viewerstats = new List<stats>();
    }
}

One object of this class will be filled and saved with:

 File.WriteAllText(tmpfile, JsonConvert.SerializeObject(current), Encoding.UTF8);

The saving part works fine and the file exists and is filled. After that the file will be read back into the class with:

try 
{ 
    ViewerStatsFormat current = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ViewerStatsFormat>(tmpfile);
    //otherstuff        
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
    //error loging stuff
}

Now on the current= line comes the exception:

{"Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: e. Path '', line 0, position 0."}

I don't know why this comes. The JSON file is the following -> Click me I am the JSON link

Does anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

Based on the line 0, position 0 information from your error code, it's likely that you are not passing (valid) JSON to DeserializeObject.

It looks like from File.WriteAllText(tmpfile,... that type of tmpfile is string that contain path to a file. JsonConvert.DeserializeObject takes JSON value, not file path - so it fails trying to convert something like @"c:\temp\fooo" - which is clearly not JSON.