How to remove escape characters from Json string?

Question

I have a c# method that calls another method which returns back a string that is supposed to represent JSON. However, the string has escape characters in it:

public string GetPerson()
{
  string person = repo.GetPerson(); //person is  "{\"name\":jack,\"age\":\"54\"...
  return person;            
}

If I try to do a replace, there is no change:

string person = repo.GetPerson().Replace(@"\""", ""); //person still has escape characters

When I try to view person in the text viewer when debugging, the escape characters are not there--Visual Studio rips them off. But my javascript that calls this method does see the escape characters in the ajax response.

If I try to deserialize the person string into my C# User object, it does not deserialize properly:

User user = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<User>(person);

What are my options? How can I either strip off the escape characters from the person string, or deserialize it correctly to the User object?

What are you using to serialize and pass the JSON?

Greg
– Greg

2015-01-13 23:20:47 +00:00
Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 23:20 — Greg
– Greg, Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 23:20

Mihail Alexe · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-14 10:21:32Z

3

If a Console.WriteLine(person) shows those backslashes and quotes around the string (not just the string and quotes inside), then there is a double serialization issue. You could try first to deserialize it to a string, then to a type, like this:

User user = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<User>(JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<String>(person));

Also, you could try to do:

string person = repo.GetPerson().Replace(@"\""", @"""");

If you have control over the API, check for double serialization on return. ASP does a default serialization, so usually you don't have to return a string with the object pre-serialized.

For webapi, use Ok(object), for ASP MVC, use Json(object, requestBehaviour) methods.

edited Jan 14, 2015 at 10:21

answered Jan 14, 2015 at 0:10

Mihail Alexe

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1 Comment

Prabhu Over a year ago

Thanks. It seemed to be a case of double serialization.

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