vb.net - How to read JSON http post response using VB

Question

I have the following code, it connects to PHP server and retrieve data successfully, i'm not very good with VB, how can i read the JSON response text and extract it's elements?

Public Class Form1
    Private Sub submit_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles submit.Click
        Dim user As String
        Dim pass As String
        user = uname.Text
        pass = passwd.Text

        Dim request As WebRequest = WebRequest.Create("http://domain.com/test.php")
        request.Method = "POST"
        Dim postData As String
        postData = "username=" & user & "&password=" & pass
        Dim byteArray As Byte() = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData)
        request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
        request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length
        Dim dataStream As Stream = request.GetRequestStream()
        dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length)
        dataStream.Close()
        Dim response As WebResponse = request.GetResponse()
        Console.WriteLine(CType(response, HttpWebResponse).StatusDescription)
        dataStream = response.GetResponseStream()
        Dim reader As New StreamReader(dataStream)
        Dim responseFromServer As String = reader.ReadToEnd()
        If responseFromServer = "0" Then
            MsgBox("Login Failed")
        Else
            MsgBox("json data")
        End If
        reader.Close()
        dataStream.Close()
        response.Close()
    End Sub
End Class

The JSON response would be something like:

{"comments": [
               {
               "comment" : "some text",
               "date"    : "some date",
               "user"    : "user name"
               },
               {
               "comment" : "some text",
               "date"    : "some date",
               "user"    : "user name"
               }
             ],
 "messages": [ .... ]
}

How to output the json string into:

Comments
user      date      comment
-----------------------------------
user 1    date 1    comment 1
user 2    date 2    comment 2

Messages
user      date      message
-----------------------------------
user 1    date 1    message 1
user 2    date 2    message 2

Answer 1

After long research and many tests I found out a very nice extension called Newtonsoft.json, it's extremely simple and can be installed from package manager console like this:

install-package Newtonsoft.json

And include it like this:

Imports Newtonsoft.Json
Imports Newtonsoft.Json.Linq

Then all i needed to do is to declare the elements names and values like this:

Else
    Dim json As String = responseFromServer
    Dim ser As JObject = JObject.Parse(json)
    Dim data As List(Of JToken) = ser.Children().ToList
    Dim output As String = ""

    For Each item As JProperty In data
        item.CreateReader()
        Select Case item.Name
            Case "comments"
                output += "Comments:" + vbCrLf
                For Each comment As JObject In item.Values
                    Dim u As String = comment("user")
                    Dim d As String = comment("date")
                    Dim c As String = comment("comment")
                    output += u + vbTab + d + vbTab + c + vbCrLf
                Next

            Case "messages"
                output += "Messages:" + vbCrLf
                For Each msg As JObject In item.Values
                    Dim f As String = msg("from")
                    Dim t As String = msg("to")
                    Dim d As String = msg("date")
                    Dim m As String = msg("message")
                    Dim s As String = msg("status")
                    output += f + vbTab + t + vbTab + d + vbTab + m + vbTab + s + vbCrLf
                Next

        End Select
    Next
    MsgBox(output)
End If

hope someone will find this useful