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How to convert XML to JSON using C#/LINQ?

Asked 2012-08-20T11:48:10.760
24

I have the following XML file that I need to convert to JSON in the server. Initially I thought I would convert it to a Dictionary and then use the JavaScriptSerializer to turn it into JSON but since each column could have a different value type, I don't think it would work. Has anyone done something similar before in C#/LINQ?

I need to preserve the Value Types(Boolean, String, Integer) of each column.

I would appreciate any advice on this as Im just starting to work with XML. Thanks. 

<Columns>
 <Column Name="key1" DataType="Boolean">True</Column>
 <Column Name="key2" DataType="String">Hello World</Column>
 <Column Name="key3" DataType="Integer">999</Column>
</Columns>
c# json xml xml-parsing
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1 Answer

41
using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
using System.Xml.Linq;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var xml = 
        @"<Columns>
          <Column Name=""key1"" DataType=""Boolean"">True</Column>
          <Column Name=""key2"" DataType=""String"">Hello World</Column>
          <Column Name=""key3"" DataType=""Integer"">999</Column>
        </Columns>";
        var dic = XDocument
            .Parse(xml)
            .Descendants("Column")
            .ToDictionary(
                c => c.Attribute("Name").Value, 
                c => c.Value
            );
        var json = new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(dic);
        Console.WriteLine(json);
    }
}

produces:

{"key1":"True","key2":"Hello World","key3":"999"}

Obviously this treats all the values as strings. If you want to keep the underlying type semantics you could do the following:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
using System.Xml.Linq;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var xml = 
        @"<Columns>
          <Column Name=""key1"" DataType=""System.Boolean"">True</Column>
          <Column Name=""key2"" DataType=""System.String"">Hello World</Column>
          <Column Name=""key3"" DataType=""System.Int32"">999</Column>
        </Columns>";
        var dic = XDocument
            .Parse(xml)
            .Descendants("Column")
            .ToDictionary(
                c => c.Attribute("Name").Value, 
                c => Convert.ChangeType(
                    c.Value,
                    typeof(string).Assembly.GetType(c.Attribute("DataType").Value, true)
                )
            );
        var json = new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(dic);
        Console.WriteLine(json);
    }
}

produce

answered 2012-08-20T11:55:56.860

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