Parse JSON from a string that contains more than JSON - json

Question

A third party NuGet package throws an exception and in its exception message there is a an error and a JSON object:
Request failed, Message: {"Message":"Some error message"}
How can I extract the JSON from string and get the Message property?
I know that I could use Regex to format the string before passing it to deserializer or even trim the text until the first {
Is there a cleaner way to do it using Json.NET?

Answer 1

No.
Json.Net is built to parse JSON. If you have extra text in the string that is not JSON, the parser will not be able to make sense of it. Your best bet is to strip off the text before the first brace (and after the last brace), like you suggested in your question. You can make a helper method to do this easily:
public static string ExtractJson(string text)
{
int i = text.IndexOf('{');
int j = text.LastIndexOf('}');
return i > -1 && j > i ? text.Substring(i, j - i + 1) : null;
}
Once you've extracted the JSON, you can use Json.Net like you normally would.
Fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/WoflVv