At first glance, it looked complicated and it just felt like something that should have come out-of-the-box.
Well, here is the Extension Method:
public static class ExtensionMethods {
public static string OuterText(this JToken token) {
var sw = new StringWriter();
token.OuterText(sw);
return sw.ToString();
}
public static void OuterText(this JToken token, StringWriter sw) {
switch (token.Type) {
case JTokenType.String:
sw.WriteLine(token.ToString());
break;
case JTokenType.Property:
case JTokenType.Array:
case JTokenType.Object:
foreach (var item in token.Values()) {
OuterText(item, sw);
}
break;
}
}
}
Here's an easy way of using it:
public void Test() {
var jsonString = "{ \"Title\":\"Extending Newtonsoft
JSON JToken to output only the text values\", \"OtherStuff\":[ {\"text\": \"I sure wish I had a way of converting a JSON Object to text, but
without it being in JSON format...\"}, \"Wait a minute, ... I CAN!\", { \"objectContainingText\": { \"numberProp\": 1, \"stringProp\": \"Hooray for extension methods!\" } } ] }";
var jsonToken = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JToken>(jsonString);
var jsonText = jsonToken.OuterText();
}
Here's the result:
Extending Newtonsoft JSON JToken to output only the text values
I sure wish I had a way of converting a JSON Object to text, but without it being in JSON format...
Wait a minute, ... I CAN!
Hooray for extension methods!
Originally, I was deserializing to a JObject, however JObject is also a JToken, so I wrote the extension method to be versatile enough to handle any of those other types.
