Visual Studio: JSON visualizer when debugging

visual-studio json visual-studio-2010 debuggervisualizer

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Solution 1

You may reference theses posts:

JSON Debugger visualizer in Visual Studio 2012

JSON Debugger Visualizer in Visual Studio 2013

Solution 2

Yes, use this addon on Codeplex.

archive.org - JSON Viewer on Codeplex

Solution 3

Overtly visible disclamer: I wrote this and I'm giving it away for free via Microsofts Visual Studio Gallery. No ads, no link to my own site or anything.

I found this thread when looking for the exact same thing but seeing that http://jsonviewer.codeplex.com/ is "A visualizer for Visual Studio 2005" i felt that it was probably to outdated for my use. So I wrote a new visualizer instead (with built in jsonlint-support!). It has been tested with Visual Studio 2012 (but probably works fine for at least 2008 and 2010) and available from Microsofts Visual Studio Gallery.

Solution 4

Actually it does work in visual studio 2010, but you have to unblock the assemblies. In explorer right click on the DLL and view properties the is a button to unblock the assembly.

Solution 5

I know the question references specifically Visual Studio 2010, but at least in Visual Studio 2019, the JSON Visualizer is already integrated so you don't need any extension, I would say.

Just select the JSON Visualizer in variable's view context menu:

And then press the view button:

View more solutions

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Dan Esparza

As a Software Developer I really like Go / Docker / C# / ASP.NET / MVC / Bootstrap / ReactJS and Flux / yarn / webpack / AppVeyor, CircleCI, RedGate Ants, and that my favorite comic has its own website. As a budding software entrepreneur I like Hacker News, Trello, Stripe, Github, CircleCI, Balsqmiq mockups, Pingdom, CloudFlare, MailGun, DigitalOcean and Amazon EC2. As a cook, I really like the French & Good Eats. As an American, I like College Football and Baseball. As an iPhone & iPad user, I like Reeder, & 1Password. As a lover of the interwebs, I like Pinboard.in, Pocket, Flickr, Yelp, Keepass, and Dropbox As a network and web security hobbyist, I follow Bruce and was illuminated by the Base Rate fallacy. As a geek, I really enjoy learning about quantum physics and I'm amazed by the double slit experiment. Feynman was a rock star in my book.

Updated on June 22, 2022

Comments

Dan Esparza about 2 years

When debugging in Visual Studio 2010 and hovering over a variable name, I'm given the option to use 3 different built-in visualizers: Text, XML, & HTML.

Here is an example of what I'm referring to:

Since I'm doing more and more work with JSON based data, is there a JSON visualizer that I can install?
Ofer Zelig over 12 years

No - it produces 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' when you click a variable and choose JSON as the visualizer. I'm using the latest version which is 1.2.
Dan Esparza over 10 years

Flipping. Awesome. Thanks!
PUG over 10 years

i cant find JsonViewer.dll.config
PUG over 10 years

can it convert a object into json string?
Karl-Johan Sjögren over 10 years

No, this is just a tool to preview JSON in string variables in Visual Studio. If you need to work with JSON in your own project (serializing/deserializing objects for example) you should have a look at JSON.Net. james.newtonking.com/json
Greg Woods almost 8 years

System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'EPocalipse.Json.Visualizer.JsonVisualizer' to type 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers.DialogDebuggerVi‌sualizer'. at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers.DebugViewerShim.M‌anagedShim.Delegated‌Host.CreateViewer(In‌tPtr hwnd, HostServicesHelper hsh, SafeProxyWrapper proxy)
Karl-Johan Sjögren almost 8 years

It seems so, that site hasn't been up in a few months. I kinda abandoned this addon since it came builtin in Visual Studio 2015 (even the community edition). Nevertheless, I've uploaded the latest version I found on my computer (which was newer then the one available earlier) so hopefully it'll work if you are on an older version of visual studio.