json files in a resx are binary instead of text

Question

I have some test data (json files) that I am using while testing some software. It is static data and I need the tests to run locally and on build machines that I don't have to much control of. In order to get uniform access to the test data (json files) I have put them into a RESX file and that is working nicely except that I had to change the extension of the file from .json to .txt.

If I left it as .json it was added to the resx file as a "Binary" instead of "Text File". This by itself wasn't the end of the road... I simply read out the bits and converted it back to a string but when I tried to deserialize the string (after the conversion from byte[]) I got an exception for unexpected char at position 0 line 0.

The only real downside to the "txt" extension is that I loose the color coding in the IDE for a JSON file.

Is there a way to force the RESX to treat the .json extension as a "Text File"?

@GrawCube Encoding.UTF8 and Encoding.Default... same error for both. — Ryan Pedersen, Mar 14 '15 at 19:29
I see, and what are the JSON files encoded in? If you open the file up in a hex editor, can you see nulls between every character? — cbr, Mar 14 '15 at 19:33
@GrawCube In the beginning of the file I see the Byte order mark in UTF8 format. — Ryan Pedersen, Mar 14 '15 at 20:20

score 35 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 27 '16 at 16:58

35

Maybe it's too late, but there is a very simple method to achieve what you want. Just select the desired file in the resources window, hit F4 or go to the Properties and select proper FileType there. It has two options: binary and text.

answered Oct 27 '16 at 16:58

Axm

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Thank you, you save my f***ing day – Arnaud Gueras Feb 11 '22 at 15:47
This is the answer I was looking for! – Rob Farquharson Feb 16 '22 at 16:50

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '18 at 17:21

A colleague of mine just encountered a similar issue with a .cshtml file. The actual content of the file didn't seem to matter when we renamed the file to have an extension that was known to work caused it to add as text.

Also, Axm's suggestion worked to fix it, but we initially missed it because you can't right-click on the resource and select properties.

json files in a resx are binary instead of text

2 Answers2