Converting PHP array of arrays to C#

Question

I am writing a C# client for a 3rd party API (I'm using the RestSharp nuget package). Their documentation contains PHP examples which I must translate to C#. Most of their samples are simple enough and I have been able to convert them to C# but I am struggling with one of them because it accepts an array of arrays. Here's the sample from their documentation:

$params = array (
    'user_key' => 'X',
    'client_id'=> 'X,
    'label' => array(
        array(
            'language' => 'en_US',
            'name' => 'English label',
        ),
        array(
            'language' => 'fr_CA',
            'name' => 'French label',
        ),
    ),
);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://api.3rdparty.com/xxx/yyy'); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('apikey: YOURAPIKEY'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($params));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$result = curl_exec($ch);

Here's what I have so far:

var labels = new Dictionary<string, string>() 
{
    { "en_US", "English Label" },
    { "fr_CA", "French Label" }
};

var request = new RestRequest("/xxx/yyy", Method.POST) { RequestFormat = DataFormat.Json };
request.AddHeader("apikey", myApiKey);
request.AddParameter("user_key", myUserKey);
request.AddParameter("client_id", myClientId);
request.AddParameter("label", ???);

var client = new RestSharp.RestClient("https://api.3rdparty.com")
{
    Timeout = timeout,
    UserAgent = "My .NET REST Client"
};
var response = client.Execute(request);

Does anybody know how to convert the "labels" dictionary into a format that would be equivalent to PHP's http_build_query?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 24 '15 at 00:15

http_build_query($params) produces output that looks like this:

user_key=X&client_id=X&label%5B0%5D%5Blanguage%5D=en_US&label%5B0%5D%5Bname%5D=English+label&label%5B1%5D%5Blanguage%5D=fr_CA&label%5B1%5D%5Bname%5D=French+label

Which, decoded, looks like:

user_key=X&client_id=X&label[0][language]=en_US&label[0][name]=English label&label[1][language]=fr_CA&label[1][name]=French label

So, you should be able to do:

        var request = new RestRequest("/xxx/yyy", Method.POST);
        request.AddHeader("apikey", myApiKey);
        request.AddParameter("user_key", myUserKey);
        request.AddParameter("client_id", myClientId);
        foreach (var item in labels.Select((pair, i) => new { index = i, language = pair.Key, name = pair.Value }))
        {
            request.AddParameter(string.Format("label[{0}][language]", item.index), item.language);
            request.AddParameter(string.Format("label[{0}][name]", item.index), item.name);
        }

Note that, from experimentation, I have noticed that RestSharp is encoding a space as %20 rather than as +. Hopefully not a problem.

by the way, I really like how you re-shape the list to include each item's index. It's much more convenient that declaring an integer and incrementing it by one in each loop. — desautelsj, Apr 30 '15 at 16:30

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 24 '15 at 00:03

-1

You may use HttpBuildQuery that is the specular implementation of that PHP function.

answered Apr 24 '15 at 00:03

Snake

106
1
10

It does not work very well for me... It does not handle nested dictionaries properly. – vojta Dec 02 '15 at 12:31

Converting PHP array of arrays to C#

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