Can you Instantiate an Object Instance from JSON in .NET?

Question

Since Object Initializers are very similar to JSON, and now there are Anonymous Types in .NET. It would be cool to be able to take a string, such as JSON, and create an Anon

Answer 1

You can't return an anonymous type from a method**, so a "rehydrated" anonymous type's existence would be limited to the method in which it is rehydrated. Kind of pointless.

** You can return it as an object (which requires reflection to access its properties--yeech) or you can "cast it by example", which is pointless as well, since it takes extra steps and it means you already KNOW what the object's type should look like, so why not just create an object and fill it up in the first place?