Introduction

json-sharp contains 4 methods:

string JSON.Serialize(object o);
string object.ToJSON();
T JSON.Deserialize<T>(string json);
object JSON.Deserialize(string json);

It is of note that only public properties are serialized and deserialized.

Setup

Minimal setup is required to get json-sharp running.

1. Download either the DLL or the source file.
2. Include either the DLL or the source file in your project.
3. Include a using reference to System.Web in the .cs file you intend to use json-sharp if there isn't one already.

using System.Web;

Examples

Serializing

There are two ways in which you can serialize an object. First of all, you can use the straight-forward Serialize method.

string myJsonString = JSON.Serialize(MyRandomObject);

or you can use the even easier object.ToJSON method.

string myJsonString = MyRandomObject.ToJSON();

Deserializing

There are also two ways in which you can deserialize a JSON string. First of all, you can use the more generic Deserialize method without specifying a type.

ArrayList numberListList = JSON.Deserialize("[[20.4,-30,-42.6,-0.5e10], [-0.5e-3,0.5E2,0.323E-2,50,60]]");

or you can specify a type and get a useful object.

string x = "[[10,20.4,-30,-42.6,-0.5e10], [-0.5e-10,0.5E10,0.323E-10,50,60]]";
double[][] y = JSON.Deserialize<double[][]>(x);

Comparison to other Libraries

I ran some tests against two other popular libraries to test speed and ease of use. The other libraries I tested json-sharp against are Newtonsoft's Json.NET and Microsoft's built in JSON deserializer. The test is a fairly simple, but large (~253 KB), JSON file. The JSON is just a large array of a simple object. This object contains 10 Properties (4 ints, 3 decimals, 2 strings, 1 datetime). I store the json in a string variable, then call each library's deserialization method 100 times and report the overall time it took.

Microsoft

• Lines of Code: 18
• Execution time: 3.875 seconds
• Using statements: 2
• Libraries imported: 0
• Size of libraries: 0

Newtonsoft

• Lines of code: 1
• Execution time (typecasted): 12.234 seconds
• Execution time (generic): 8.609 seconds
• Using statements: 1
• Libraries imported: 1
• Size of libraries: 192 KB

json-sharp

• Lines of code: 1
• Execution time (typecasted): 5.859 seconds
• Execution time (generic): 1.688 seconds
• Using statements: 1
• Libraries imported 1
• Size of libraries: 13 KB