Deserializing JSON to .NET object using Newtonsoft (or LINQ to JSON maybe?)

If you just need to get a few items from the JSON object, I would use Json.NET's LINQ to JSON JObject class. For example:

JToken token = JObject.Parse(stringFullOfJson);

int page = (int)token.SelectToken("page");
int totalPages = (int)token.SelectToken("total_pages");

I like this approach because you don't need to fully deserialize the JSON object. This comes in handy with APIs that can sometimes surprise you with missing object properties, like Twitter.

Documentation: Serializing and Deserializing JSON with Json.NET and LINQ to JSON with Json.NET

You can use the C# dynamic type to make things easier. This technique also makes re-factoring simpler as it does not rely on magic-strings.

JSON

The JSON string below is a simple response from an HTTP API call, and it defines two properties: Id and Name.

{"Id": 1, "Name": "biofractal"}

C#

Use JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>() to deserialize this string into a dynamic type then simply access its properties in the usual way.

dynamic results = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(json);
var id = results.Id;
var name= results.Name;

If you specify the type of the results variable as dynamic, instead of using the var keyword, then the property values will correctly deserialize, e.g. Id to an int and not a JValue (thanks to GFoley83 for the comment below).

Note: The NuGet link for the Newtonsoft assembly is http://nuget.org/packages/newtonsoft.json.

Package: You can also add the package with nuget live installer, with your project opened just do browse package and then just install it install, unistall, update, it will just be added to your project under Dependencies/NuGet

With the dynamic keyword, it becomes really easy to parse any object of this kind:

dynamic x = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(jsonString);
var page = x.page;
var total_pages = x.total_pages
var albums = x.albums;
foreach(var album in albums)
{
    var albumName = album.name;

    // Access album data;
}

If, like me, you prefer to deal with strongly typed objects** go with:

MyObj obj =  JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyObj>(jsonString);

This way you get to use intellisense and compile time type error checking.

You can easily create the required objects by copying your JSON into memory and pasting it as JSON objects (Visual Studio -> Edit -> Paste Special -> Paste JSON as Classes).

See here if you don't have that option in Visual Studio.

You will also need to make sure your JSON is valid. Add your own object at the start if it is just an array of objects. i.e. {"obj":[{},{},{}]}

** I know that dynamic makes things easier sometimes but I'm a bit ol'skool with this.