From DataTable in C# .NET to JSON

Question

I am pretty new at C# and .NET, but I\'ve made this code to call a stored procedure, and I then want to take the returned DataTable and convert it to JSON.

Answer 1

You could use the JSON.NET library: http://json.codeplex.com/ to serialize/deserialize the DataTable.

string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(table);

which serializes to something like this:

[ { "Column1": "Row Value", "Column2": "2" } ]

If you need to serialize more info about the DataTable e.g. column schema, primary key, table name then you could use the custom converter I wrote: https://github.com/chris-herring/DataTableConverter. Use it like this:

string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(table, new Serialization.DataTableConverter());
DataTable table = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(json, new Serialization.DataTableConverter());

which serializes to something like this:

{
    "TableName": "TestTable",
    "Columns": [
        {
            "AllowDBNull": false,
            "AutoIncrement": true,
            "AutoIncrementSeed": 2,
            "AutoIncrementStep": 1,
            "Caption": "PrimaryKey",
            "ColumnName": "PrimaryKey",
            "DataType": "Int32",
            "DateTimeMode": "UnspecifiedLocal",
            "DefaultValue": null,
            "MaxLength": -1,
            "Ordinal": 0,
            "ReadOnly": false,
            "Unique": true
        }
    ],
    "Rows": [
        [
            1
        ],
        [
            2
        ],
        [
            3
        ]
    ],
    "PrimaryKey": ["PrimaryKey"]
}