Get response by web api a json string and print only one of the values

Question

I call an API that returns a JSON string like this one:

{ 
    "type": "success", 
    "value": 
    { 
        "id": 246, 
        "joke": "Random joke here...", 
        "categories": [] 
    } 
}

I want to make my program read the JSON string and return only the joke string. I was able to get the string from the Web API but I can't make it to JSON object so I can print only the joke string.

Answer 1

First you'll need to create the classes to deserialize your json into. For this you can use VS's Edit -> Paste Special -> Paste Json As Classes or use a website like JsonUtils:

public class JokeInfo
{

    [JsonProperty("id")]
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("joke")]
    public string Joke { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("categories")]
    public IList<string> Categories { get; set; }
}

public class ServerResponse
{

    [JsonProperty("type")]
    public string Type { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("value")]
    public JokeInfo JokeInfo { get; set; }
}

Then use a library like JSON.NET to deserialize the data:

// jokeJsonString is the response you get from the server
var serverResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ServerResponse>(jokeJsonString);
// Then you can access the content like this:

var theJoke = serverResponse.JokeInfo.Joke;