How to get a JSON string from URL?

Question

I'm switching my code form XML to JSON.

But I can't find how to get a JSON string from a given URL.

The URL is something like this: "https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=.....&format=json"

I used XDocuments before, there I could use the load method:

XDocument doc = XDocument.load("URL");

What is the equivalent of this method for JSON? I'm using JSON.NET.

Answer 1

Use the WebClient class in System.Net:

var json = new WebClient().DownloadString("url");

Keep in mind that WebClient is IDisposable, so you would probably add a using statement to this in production code. This would look like:

using (WebClient wc = new WebClient())
{
   var json = wc.DownloadString("url");
}

Answer 2

AFAIK JSON.Net does not provide functionality for reading from a URL. So you need to do this in two steps:

using (var webClient = new System.Net.WebClient()) {
    var json = webClient.DownloadString(URL);
    // Now parse with JSON.Net
}

Answer 3

If you're using .NET 4.5 and want to use async then you can use HttpClient in System.Net.Http:

using (var httpClient = new HttpClient())
{
    var json = await httpClient.GetStringAsync("url");

    // Now parse with JSON.Net
}