I want to start up a series of blog posts where I talk about things that I think are cool. They can be time savers, productivity tools, podcasts, books, products, or even people.

The point is - if I find something that's cool and helps me out in some way - I want to spread the love and write a quick post about it so others know about it too.

With that said - the first thing I think is cool is a plugin for Xamarin Studio called JSON Copy.

Why Is It Cool?

JSON Copy takes a JSON string that has been copied to the clipboard (no matter how long and unwieldy), and then pastes that string as a C# class - translating the JSON properties to C# properties and discarding any values that were in the JSON string.

Along the way it does its best to infer the datatypes of the properties based on the data in the JSON string as well!

JSON Copy is developed by Prashant Cholachagudda, and while it's not a new add-in, it's definitely worth your while to download it and use it!

How Do I Get It?

You can follow the instructions on Prashant's blog

Find the code on GitHub.

Or open up the Add-Ins modal from the Xamarin Studio menu option in Xamarin Studio, and select "JSON Copy" from under the Gallery tab - IDE Extensions node.

That's Cool!!