I am hosting a web service in ASP.Net MVC3 which returns a Json string. What is the best way to call the webservice from a c# console application, and parse the return into a .NET object?
Should I reference MVC3 in my console app?
Json.Net has some nice methods for serializing and deserializing .NET objects, but I don't see that it has ways for POSTing and GETing values from a webservice.
Or should I just create my own helper method for POSTing and GETing to the web service? How would I serialize my .net object to key value pairs?
Best Answer
I use HttpWebRequest to GET from the web service, which returns me a JSON string. It looks something like this for a GET:
I then use JSON.Net to dynamically parse the string. Alternatively, you can generate the C# class statically from sample JSON output using this codeplex tool: http://jsonclassgenerator.codeplex.com/
POST looks like this:
I use code like this in automated tests of our web service.