Question

My web service responses has mimetype: "application/json" and my JSON outputs without spacing, like this

1

{"Data":{"Item":"123","Timestamp":"2011-11-24T17:50:43"}}

When the JSON should output like this

2

{
   "Data":{
      "Item":"123",
      "Timestamp":"2011-11-24T17:50:43"
   }
}

Is there any way I can fix the JSON format, so it appears like #2?

Answer 1

I wouldn’t change the format written out by the web service, but if you want to format it for diagnostic purposes you can use Json.NET to do this very simply:

JObject json = JObject.Parse(text);
string formatted = json.ToString();

The result is automatically formatted. You could put this into a small tool – either a desktop tool or a web page somewhere. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there were already online JSON formatters, although obviously you’d want to be careful about formatting sensitive data.)