Parsing nested Json using Json.Net

Question

I'm new to Json and trying to understand how I can parse it using Json.Net. I've tried to create objects for my json input, but I'm stuck. I'm not quite sure how to parse the input so I can iterate through it and output the season numbers and episode name.

Anyone who can point me in the right direction?

Json:

{  
   "data":{  
      "1921":{  
         "1":{  
            "airdate":"1921-03-20",
            "name":"Cleaning Up!!?",
            "quality":"N/A",
            "status":"Wanted"
         },
         "2":{  
            "airdate":"1921-03-20",
            "name":"Kansas City Girls Are Rolling Their Own Now",
            "quality":"N/A",
            "status":"Wanted"
         },
         "3":{  
            "airdate":"1921-03-20",
            "name":"Did You Ever Take a Ride Over Kansas City Street 'in a Fliver'",
            "quality":"N/A",
            "status":"Wanted"
         },
         "4":{  
            "airdate":"1921-03-20",
            "name":"Kansas City's Spring Clean-Up",
            "quality":"N/A",
            "status":"Wanted"
         }
      },
      "1923":{  
         "1":{  
            "airdate":"2013-05-16",
            "name":"Alice's Wonderland - aka - Alice in Slumberland",
            "quality":"Unknown",
            "status":"Downloaded"
         }
      }
   },
   "message":"",
   "result":"success"
}

Code:

static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            RootObject data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(System.IO.File.ReadAllText(@"C:\Users\Benjamin\Desktop\json\input.txt"));
            foreach (var e in data)
            {
                // Being able to output Season and Episode name like:
                // 1921 - Cleaning Up!!?
            }
        }

        public class RootObject
        {
            public Dictionary<int, Season> data { get; set; }
            public string message { get; set; }
            public string result { get; set; }
        }

        public class Season
        {
            public Dictionary<string, Episode> number { get; set; }
        }

        public class Episode
        {
            public string airdate { get; set; }
            public string name { get; set; }
            public string quality { get; set; }
            public string status { get; set; }
        }

What exactly are you having trouble with? Are you getting an error? — mason
– mason, Commented Oct 6, 2014 at 19:41
What does data look like after deserializing? Is it populated? In your RootObject you have a Dictionary called data so you'd need to iterate over data.data to start with. — Matt Burland
– Matt Burland, Commented Oct 6, 2014 at 19:42
yeah, is the RootObject populated? Are you getting an exception? Your code looks correct. — Nicholas Terry
– Nicholas Terry, Commented Oct 6, 2014 at 19:46

Matt Burland · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-06 20:17:59Z

2

With a change to your RootObject:

public class RootObject
{
    public Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, Episode>> data { get; set; }
    public string message { get; set; }
    public string result { get; set; }
}

You can then do this:

RootObject root = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(data);
foreach (var s in root.data)
{
    foreach (var e in s.Value)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} - {1}", s.Key, e.Value.name));
        // access whatever properties you want here...
    }
}

Note, we have eliminated the Season object because JSON.net won't be able to map to the property number because that's not a property in your original JSON (you can make it work, but it would require some fiddling around with custom serialization).

If you really want a LINQ solution, then something like:

root.data.ToList().ForEach(s =>
{
    s.Value.ToList().ForEach(e =>
    {
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} - {1}", s.Key, e.Value.name));
    });
});

Achieves the same thing, but requires copying your dictionary into a list which might be a problem if your dictionary is very large.

edited Oct 6, 2014 at 20:17

answered Oct 6, 2014 at 19:49

Matt Burland

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6 Comments

Nicholas Terry Over a year ago

LINQ with Lambdas are a LOT more concise and readable.... use them to get ahead! (See below for an example). Additionally, Model objects shouldn't have business logic in them....

Matt Burland Over a year ago

@nterry: Concise? yes. Readable? very debatable. As for business logic, there's no business logic here. The models only define the way the data is structured.

Nicholas Terry Over a year ago

Linq is very readable. You just need to get used to it. just use a Select if ForEach isnt available.

Matt Burland Over a year ago

@nterry: Are you suggesting two foreach loops aren't readable? I use LINQ all the time, but I don't think it's really necessary here.

BartoszKP Over a year ago

@nterry I agree with Matt. Beside debatable improvement of readability in the LINQ (it's not even LINQ) version it needs to materialize the whole query via .ToList() before iteration (only lists have ForEach - your suggestion to use Select is wrong), which is really unnecessary.

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