How to serialize\deserialize a property where the property name is dependent on the data

Question

I'm trying to get the following json (see below) deserialized (using newtonsoft json serializer) and the problem is the variable named "2010-12" it is obviously dependent on the data returned - it represents a month and next month the value will change to "2010-01".

Any ideas on how i could handle this with the following class?

[JsonObject(MemberSerialization.OptIn)]
public class Crimes
{
   [JsonProperty()]
   public Month Month { get; set; }
}

Example JSON instance:

{
    "commentary": null,
    "crimes": {
        "2010-12": {
            "anti-social-behaviour": {
                "crime_rate": "0.46",
                "crime_level": "average",
                "total_crimes": 74
            },
            "other-crime": {
                "crime_rate": "0.35",
                "crime_level": "average",
                "total_crimes": 56
            },
            "all-crime": {
                "crime_rate": "1.12",
                "crime_level": "average",
                "total_crimes": 180
            },
            "robbery": {
                "crime_rate": "0.02",
                "crime_level": "above_average",
                "total_crimes": 3
            },
            "burglary": {
                "crime_rate": "0.14",
                "crime_level": "above_average",
                "total_crimes": 22
            },
            "vehicle-crime": {
                "crime_rate": "0.04",
                "crime_level": "average",
                "total_crimes": 7
            },
            "violent-crime": {
                "crime_rate": "0.11",
                "crime_level": "average",
                "total_crimes": 18
            }
        }
    }
}

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 22 '11 at 21:18

I'm not familiar with Newtonsoft's deserializer, but generally speaking I think the thing to do would be to deserialize the crimes property as a dictionary with either a string or DateTime key. Sorry I can't tell you exactly how to do that in Newtonsoft, but try looking into it.

How to serialize\deserialize a property where the property name is dependent on the data

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