Is there a direct way to go from POCO to JsonNode?

Question

I want to create a JsonNode corresponding to a C# object (a POCO).

One way to do this would be to:

string json = JsonSerializer.Serialize(poco);
JsonNode? jsonNode = JsonNode.Parse(json);

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

You can use the JsonSerializer.SerializeToNode method, which directly serializes the object to a JsonNode:

JsonNode? jsonNode = JsonSerializer.SerializeToNode(poco);

This way, you skip the overhead of serializing to a string first, making it a bit more efficient.

Edit example:

using System.Text.Json;
using System.Text.Json.Nodes;

var poco = new { Name = "John Doe", Age = 30 };
JsonNode? jsonNode = JsonSerializer.SerializeToNode(poco);
Console.WriteLine(jsonNode);

Documentation: JsonSerializer.SerializeToNode