Question

I’m using JSON to get a System.Net.WebResponse then reading the response into a StringBuilder before getting the result of the response by calling the StringBuilder.ToString() method. I can’t Parse such a respsone using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject.Parse(repsonse);

My problem is that the ToString() method is removing my ‘{‘ and ‘}’ characters because they get escaped unless matched with another ‘{‘. Even if I do a StringBuilder.Replace(“{“, “{{“) It doesn’t work because the final brackets escape the first brackets –> Example below

My code for getting the response is:

public static string GetResponseFromRequest(string url){       

        System.Net.WebRequest req = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(url);
        System.Net.WebResponse res = req.GetResponse();
        System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

        byte[] read = new byte[256];
        int count = res.GetResponseStream().Read(read, 0, 256);
        while (count > 0)
        {
            sb.Append(System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(read));
            count = res.GetResponseStream().Read(read, 0, 256);
        }
        res.GetResponseStream().Close();

        res.Close();

        return sb.ToString();
    }

Here is a sample of what my response looks like:

{{ 
"id" : "myID",
"Name" : "MyDisplayName",
"description" : "A, MyDescription",
}"hasOverview" : true,
"hasDescription" : true,
  }

AFTER StringBuilder.ToString is called it looks like this:

 "{ 
    "id" : "myID",
    "Name" : "MyDisplayName",
    "description" : "A, MyDescription",
   }"hasOverview" : true,
    "hasDescription" : true,
      "

If I call StringBuilder.Replace(“{“, “{{“) and StringBuilder.Replace(“}”, “}}”) I get:

"{{ 
    "id" : "myID",
    "Name" : "MyDisplayName",
    "description" : "A, MyDescription",
   }}"hasOverview" : true,
    "hasDescription" : true,
      "

I need a way to tell ToString() to return a literal representation of what the string builder is holding so it doesn’t take special characters into account. If possible just the ‘{‘ and ‘}’ characters in particular.

Answer 1

I disproved your original assumption by doing the following:

public static void TestSB()
{
    var testValue = "{{ \"id\" : \"myID\", \"Name\" : \"MyDisplayName\", \"description\" : \"A, MyDescription\", }\"hasOverview\" : true, \"hasDescription\" : true, }";
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append(testValue);
    var sbToString = sb.ToString();

    // Prints true
    Console.WriteLine(sbToString.Equals(testValue));
}

So with that out of the way, I think the problem is that you are trying to convert the text 256 bytes at a time, and mangling characters in the process. There are classes in the framework designed for the task you are attempting to accomplish, namely reading text from a Stream. Try this instead:

public static string GetResponseFromRequest(string url)
{
    var req = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(url);
    using (var res = req.GetResponse())
    using (var sr = new StreamReader(res.GetResponseStream()))
        return sr.ReadToEnd();
}

I tested this using the following method and the result looks OK:

public static void TestGetResponse()
{
    Console.Out.WriteLine(GetResponseFromRequest("http://www.google.com"));
}

EDIT:

Or better yet,

var result = new System.Net.WebClient().DownloadString(url)