Converting JSON object to C# class in Visual Studio

Fig. 1 - Visual Studio option to ‘Paste JSON as Class’

JSON stands for Javascript Object Notation used for storing and transferring data. Converting a JSON object to C# class type is one of the common scenarios in cases where both sender and receiver agree upon a predefined set of message contracts. Especially in an event-driven messaging architecture system (such as Azure Service Bus, Rabbit MQ, etc.)

The benefits of having to read a C# class object rather than reading JSON object properties is that it eliminates any typos and provides compile-time errors(if any)

There are quite a few websites that allow converting a JSON object to C# class object e.g: https://json2csharp.com/, https://www.site24x7.com/tools/json-to-csharp.html, etc. Some of these sites might store your inputs in their servers(you never know). It is not safe to use if you input a JSON object that is part of your company/client data.

VS Studio out of the box provides this feature if the ASP.NET and Web Development workload is installed during Visual Studio installation. Here is how to use it:

1. Create a new class file (.cs for C#) and remove all pre-defined code inside ( Right-click on project -> Add -> Class)
2. Copy JSON data to clipboard
3. Open the .cs file and navigate to Edit -> Paste Special -> Paste JSON as Class

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31

{
Employees: [{
  "id": 1,
  "first_name": "Jean",
  "last_name": "Penn",
  "email": "jeanenn@abc.org",
  "gender": "Female",
  "ip_address": "26.55.193.2"
}, {
  "id": 2,
  "first_name": "Giovani",
  "last_name": "Fred",
  "email": "gfred1@abc.ord",
  "gender": "Male",
  "ip_address": "209.109.4.212"
}, {
  "id": 3,
  "first_name": "Ed",
  "last_name": "Boyce",
  "email": "edboyce@abc.org",
  "gender": "Female",
  "ip_address": "192.66.142.244"
}, {
  "id": 4,
  "first_name": "Will",
  "last_name": "Smith",
  "email": "wsmith3@abc.org",
  "gender": "Male",
  "ip_address": "96.66.148.14"
}]
}

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

    public class EmployeeList
    {
        public Employee[] Employees { get; set; }
    }

    public class Employee
    {
        public int id { get; set; }
        public string first_name { get; set; }
        public string last_name { get; set; }
        public string email { get; set; }
        public string gender { get; set; }
        public string ip_address { get; set; }
    }

Note: Make sure that the JSON copied to the clipboard is valid and well-formatted(Use Notepad++ for this) else VS will throw an error as shown below:

Fig. 2 - Error in case of invalid JSON being pasted using ‘Paste Special’ in VS

Hope this information is useful next time when you need it!