Parsing complex JSON Object with C#

Question

I have a JSON like this one:

{
    "name" : "MyCustomName",
    "my_node" : {
        "name" : "my_node_name"
    },
    "dict1":"value1",
    "dict2":"value2",
    "dict3":"value3",
    ...
}

and an object:

class Node{
    string value;
}

class Sample:IDictionary<string, string>{ 
    Node node;
    string name; 
}

Node and Name in Sample class are always present. The thing is I don't know how many "dictN" fields will be... and that's the point.

And the question is: How to Deserialize that JSON to this Object?

do you have control of how the json is created. Can you use an array were "dict": ["val1", "val2", "val3..."]? — Ivan Pintar
– Ivan Pintar, Commented Nov 29, 2012 at 15:53
Do you have control over the object classes that you're deserializing to? As long as they provide the same API, can you change how they are implemented? — StriplingWarrior
– StriplingWarrior, Commented Nov 29, 2012 at 15:56
Is there a reason you can't use any of the existing libraries? — Daniel Hilgarth
– Daniel Hilgarth, Commented Nov 29, 2012 at 15:58

Rawling · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-29 16:16:24Z

2

Edit: apparently even with field names harmonized, your deserializer just can't cope with specific fields combined with general dictionary fields.

In which case, I'd just advise deserializing as a Dictionary<string, object> and building with the result:

var d = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Dictionary<string, object>>(json);
Sample s = new Sample();
s.name = (string)d["name"];
Node n = new Node();
n.value = (string)((Dictionary<string, object>)d["my_node"])["name"];
foreach (var key in d.Keys.Except(new string[] { "name", "my_node" }))
{
    s.Add(key, (string)d[key]);
}

edited Nov 29, 2012 at 16:16

answered Nov 29, 2012 at 15:57

Rawling

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4 Comments

Marcin Petrów Over a year ago

About changes in a class there is no problem to this. I can change Sample.node to a Sample.my_node, that same for a value

Rawling Over a year ago

Try that and see if it works, then... TBH I'd be surprised if it was able to successfully decide "this value goes in a field, this value goes in the inherited dictionary" though.

Marcin Petrów Over a year ago

Its still not working, and yeah question about passing values in right(Collection) and sometime in left(Fields) can be confuseing:/

Rawling Over a year ago

In that case, and if no-one else comes up with a better idea, I'd fall back on "Deserialize as a Dictionary<string, object>, play with it in the debugger and see how to manually convert it to your class".

Peter Smith · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-29 16:06:51Z

INITIAL IDEA

The following is a dictionary serializer. It has one special case of not accepting empty string.

private void SerializePerinatalModel<T>(IDictionary<string, object> dataModel, T perinatalModel)
    {
        Type sourceType = typeof(T);
        foreach (PropertyInfo propInfo in (sourceType.GetProperties()))
        {
            if (dataModel.ContainsKey(propInfo.Name))
            {
                //  if an empty string has been returned don't change the value
                if (dataModel[propInfo.Name].ToNullSafeString() != String.Empty)
                {
                    try
                    {
                        Type localType = propInfo.PropertyType;
                        localType = Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(localType) ?? localType;
                        propInfo.SetValue(perinatalModel, Convert.ChangeType(dataModel[propInfo.Name], localType), null); 
                    }
                    catch (Exception e)
                    {
                        //  ToDo: log update value errors
                    }

                }
            }

        }
    }

but could be made null safe. It does deal with nullable types.

As JSON is essentially a dictionary type then iterating through the top level types should get you there.

This is written in haste so is only a sketch of an idea.

BETTER IDEA Also try using

foreach (var item in JsonData.Where(m => m.Key.Substring(0,4) == "dict"))
{
   // add item to collection
}

might also do the biz.

Furqan Safdar · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-29 16:09:59Z

1

You can simply have the output in the form of Dictionary<string, object>, try this piece of code instead.

System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer s = 
    new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();

var nodes = s.Deserialize<Dictionary<string, object>>(jsonString);
var dictNodes = nodes.Where(w => w.Key.StartsWith("dict"));

answered Nov 29, 2012 at 16:09

Furqan Safdar

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2 Comments

Marcin Petrów Over a year ago

ok.... maybe my example is not good enaugh... But what if there will be fields like "mydict1". I just focused on that there are only two fields which I'm sure that always will be rest of them should goes into container.

Furqan Safdar Over a year ago

So you can achieve it with my code. The essence lies within this line of code nodes.Where(w => w.Key.StartsWith("dict")); which will give you all the nodes having dictN elements after filtration.

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