Difference between ReadAsAsync and JsonConvert

Question

This works for all properties:

string resultAsString = await httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
return await Task.Factory.StartNew(() => JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ApiData>(resultAsString));

while this works only for some of them:

return await httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsAsync<ApiData>();

what is the difference?

Answer 1

The former reads asynchronously from the stream , and then uses a thread-pool thread to deserialize the JSON string to an object.

The latter reads asynchronously from the stream, but transforms the JSON string to an object synchronously , on the thread in which resumed after awaiting the asynchronous read from the stream.

Internally, both methods will utilize Json.NET to parse the data, as the extension method HttpContentExtensions.ReadAsAsync<T> will internally call the JsonMediaTypeFormatter , which uses Json.NET.

Personally, I'd use the latter, as I see no benefit in executing the serialization on a background thread. But, test your code and see if that works for you.