How can I deserialize JSON to a simple Dictionary in ASP.NET?

Question

I have a simple key/value list in JSON being sent back to ASP.NET via POST. Example:

{ \"key1\": \"value1\", \"key2\": \"value2\"}

Answer 1

Edit: This works, but the accepted answer using Json.NET is much more straightforward. Leaving this one in case someone needs BCL-only code.

It’s not supported by the .NET framework out of the box. A glaring oversight – not everyone needs to deserialize into objects with named properties. So I ended up rolling my own:

 Public Class StringStringDictionary
    Implements ISerializable
    Public dict As System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary(Of String, String)
    Public Sub New()
        dict = New System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary(Of String, String)
    End Sub
    Protected Sub New(info As SerializationInfo, _
          context As StreamingContext)
        dict = New System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary(Of String, String)
        For Each entry As SerializationEntry In info
            dict.Add(entry.Name, DirectCast(entry.Value, String))
        Next
    End Sub
    Public Sub GetObjectData(info As SerializationInfo, context As StreamingContext) Implements ISerializable.GetObjectData
        For Each key As String in dict.Keys
            info.AddValue(key, dict.Item(key))
        Next
    End Sub
End Class

Called with:

string MyJsonString = "{ \"key1\": \"value1\", \"key2\": \"value2\"}";
System.Runtime.Serialization.Json.DataContractJsonSerializer dcjs = new
  System.Runtime.Serialization.Json.DataContractJsonSerializer(
    typeof(StringStringDictionary));
System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new
  System.IO.MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(MyJsonString));
StringStringDictionary myfields = (StringStringDictionary)dcjs.ReadObject(ms);
Response.Write("Value of key2: " + myfields.dict["key2"]);

Sorry for the mix of C# and VB.NET…