Can I have same Class Root with both List and single definition of sub class?

Question

I am working on a back end data integration between an ERP system and Shopify using their rest API. Recently I came across what I see as an inconsistency and I'm not certain how to handle this in C sharp without too much duplication. Specifically this relates to their admin API and the product API.

What I did is I took the Jason response from an API that invokes a return of a list of products and I got this class structure (I'm going to keep it simple by showing only the root and the main products property)

public class Root
{
    public List<Product> products { get; set; }
}

However there is another API that allows you to get a single product an its return response does not utilize a list but a single subclass that is the same as the product subclass.

public class Root
{
    public Product product { get; set; }
}

Everything else about the overall product class is the same. The only difference is that in one return we have a list of subclass product in the other a single element. Without having to create two completely different classes is there a way to do this so the rest of the subclass definitions which includes other properties and subclasses can be used. This is the subclass product:

public class Product
{
    public Int64 id { get; set; }
    public string title { get; set; }
    public string body_html { get; set; }
    public string vendor { get; set; }
    public string product_type { get; set; }
    public DateTime? created_at { get; set; }
    public string handle { get; set; }
    public DateTime? updated_at { get; set; }
    public DateTime? published_at { get; set; }
    public object template_suffix { get; set; }
    public string published_scope { get; set; }
    public string tags { get; set; }
    public string admin_graphql_api_id { get; set; }
    public List<Variant> variants { get; set; }
    public List<Option> options { get; set; }
    public List<Image> images { get; set; }
    public Image image { get; set; }
}

I looked at inheritance but that didn't seem to quite fit and I wasn't certain if even extends would work and while my work around is too not use the get single product API but get a list of 1, I'm curious if there's a way to do this where I can not have to create two full classes just because in the root one is a list and one is a single object.

I am using Newton json to do the serialization and deserialization of the object data.

Can you show us the JSON that make you believe you need to do this? You can have two classes with the same name in different namespaces — Flydog57, Apr 14 '21 at 21:55
Use the `SingleOrArrayConverter` from [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/18997172/10263) to the linked duplicate question. `T` would be `Product` in your case. — Brian Rogers, Apr 15 '21 at 04:15

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 14 '21 at 23:00

You can have two classes with different names. When you deserialize the json, it will not matter what the root class is called.

public class Multi
{
    public List<Product> products { get; set; }
}

public class One
{
    public Product product { get; set; }
}

Or, you could have a single root class with both the list property and the single instance property. When the deserialization is done, just access the appropriate property.

public class Root
{
    public List<Product> products { get; set; }
    public Product product { get; set; }
}

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 14 '21 at 23:32

You could use inheritance:

public abstract class Root
{
    //All the other properties you don't want to duplicate
}

public class RootWithProduct : Root
{
    public Product product { get; set; }
}

public class RootWithProductList : Root
{
    public List<Product> products { get; set; }
}

When you need to deserialize, use:

RootWithProduct x = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootWithProduct>(json);
Product product = x.product;

Or

RootWithProductList y = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootWithProductList>(json);
List<Product> products = y.products;

Can I have same Class Root with both List and single definition of sub class?

2 Answers2