Deserialize JSON with dynamic objects

Question

I have a JSON object that comes with a long list of area codes. Unfortunately each area code is the object name on a list in the Data object. How do I create a class that will allow RestSharp to deserialize the content?

Here's how my class looks now:

public class phaxioResponse
{
    public string success { get; set; }
    public string message { get; set; }
    public List<areaCode> data { get; set; }

    public class areaCode
    {
        public string city { get; set; }
        public string state { get; set; }
    }
}

And here's the JSON content:

{
    success: true
    message: "277 area codes available."
    data: {
        201: {
            city: "Bayonne, Jersey City, Union City"
            state: "New Jersey"
        }
        202: {
            city: "Washington"
        state: "District Of Columbia"
        } [...]
}

@JohnSaunders you don't need to read the entire json object through - I'm pretty sure you can see that there's only three nodes in the main object and the data object is the same all the way through? — Peter Schrøder, May 06 '14 at 21:51
Can we ask where this "Json" is coming from? We may be able to help a little bit more, since it is clearly not valid JSON. — Pete Garafano, May 06 '14 at 22:10
@PeteGarafano yes definitely... You can make a post request to this url: https://api.phaxio.com/v1/areaCodes — Peter Schrøder, May 07 '14 at 03:04
I don't understand the scorn directed at the asker here, people will call basically any old trash json and expect you to handle it. I've seen "json" data which is a list of lists where the first list is the column names, and the remainder are the lists of values... — Toadfish, Oct 20 '16 at 04:08

score 18 · Accepted Answer · answered May 07 '14 at 14:25

18

Since this JSON is not C# friendly, I had to do a little bit of hackery to make it come out properly. However, the result is quite nice.

var json = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(sampleJson);
var data = ((JObject)json.data).Children();
var stuff = data.Select(x => new { AreaCode = x.Path.Split('.')[1], City = x.First()["city"], State = x.Last()["state"] });

This code will generate an anonymous type that best represents the data. However, the anonymous type could be easily replaced by a ctor for a more normal DTO class.

The output looks something like this:

Deserialization Output

answered May 07 '14 at 14:25

Pete Garafano

4,863
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Can you explain what is *data* in *json.data* ? Thank you – Happy Bird Jul 24 '17 at 13:46
@HappyBird, this comes from the example JSON posted in the question. – Pete Garafano Jul 25 '17 at 12:00

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 06 '14 at 21:54

2

your json is incorrect, but if you do correct it you can use a json-to-csharp tool like the one on http://json2csharp.com/ to generate your classes:

public class __invalid_type__201
{
    public string city { get; set; }
    public string state { get; set; }
}

public class Data
{
    public __invalid_type__201 __invalid_name__201 { get; set; }
}

public class RootObject
{
    public bool success { get; set; }
    public string message { get; set; }
    public Data data { get; set; }
}

answered May 06 '14 at 21:54

Z .

12,657
1
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1

That's a great idea... Unfortunately the JSON is not in my hands - it comes from an external API – Peter Schrøder May 06 '14 at 21:56
1

@PeteFox it's not valid JSON. All the field names should be in quotes to be considered valid JSON. That is why json2csharp.com is generating invalid classes. – Pete Garafano May 06 '14 at 22:09

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 06 '14 at 21:52

I don't know anything about RestSharp, but if you're using Newtonsoft on the server side, then you can just pass a JObject to your method. Then you can interrogate the object to see what type of object it really is and use JObject.ToObject() to convert it.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 08 '18 at 21:38

I think using Dictionary<int,areaCode> is the easiest way.

public class phaxioResponse
    {
        public string success { get; set; }
        public string message { get; set; }
        public Dictionary<int,areaCode> data { get; set; }

        public class areaCode
        {
            public string city { get; set; }
            public string state { get; set; }
        }
    }

Then:

    var res= JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<phaxioResponse>(json);
    Console.WriteLine(string.Join(",", res.data));

Deserialize JSON with dynamic objects

4 Answers4

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