c# How do I parse a non array array

Question

I need to parse a jsonfile that has a structure like this:

"number": {
    "1": {
      "branch": null,
      "build": 1,
      "files": [
        [
          "zip",
          "client",
          "4d96d6e8f1543c5fa1184f4771ce16e2"
        ],
        [
          "zip",
          "src",
          "fd397591148fac49a7d57aafdccac6a3"
        ],
        [
          "zip",
          "server",
          "d7e1df9a91ded33be81ee8226b027c2f"
        ],
        [
          "txt",
          "changelog",
          "df98aec1a868ce99532c64f246387d55"
        ]
      ],
      "jobver": "1.3.2",
      "mcversion": "1.1",
      "modified": 1328269373.0,
      "version": "1.3.2.01"
    },
    "2": {
      "branch": null,
      "build": 2,
      "files": [
        [
          "zip",
          "server",
          "80fbd5d837a5867c2dd7b7967e3aa2a9"
        ],
        [
          "zip",
          "client",
          "0cedb5e9844e490f877b6cf04601f929"
        ],
        [
          "txt",
          "changelog",
          "87e9fba9322e9dbc2ea482a2c3edeec6"
        ],
        [
          "zip",
          "src",
          "292d5596879bd13c159a2afe571ec5eb"
        ]
      ],
      "jobver": "1.3.2",
      "mcversion": "1.1",
      "modified": 1328613907.0,
      "version": "1.3.2.2"
    }

(The entire json file can be found here: http://files.minecraftforge.net/maven/net/minecraftforge/forge/json)
I have figure out the internals, in the "1" and the externals that leads to this code part, however using the Json.NET library I can't figure out how to deal with the "1" and "2"s without writing a seperate class for each. I have over 1000 of these to parse trough, so I need some way that can do it relatively simple. My current class for parsing looks something like this:

public class forgemaven
{
    public string homepage { get; set; }
    public string name { get; set; }
    public List<Number> number { get; set; }
    public string webpath { get; set; }
}

public class Number
{
    public string branch { get; set; }
    public int build { get; set; }
    public List<String> files { get; set; }
    public string jobver { get; set; }
    public string mcversion { get; set; }
    public string modified { get; set; }
    public string version { get; set; }
}

Note: I removed some of the things, like the first 1000 lines of version/build, since they aren't needed and json.net seems fine with that.
I have tried parsing it with http://json2csharp.com/ sadly that crashes my webbrowser. I also tried the desktop version of it, but that give me almost a MB of classes, which again isn't optimal, since new builds are constantly added to this file, so I would have to change my structure all the time, and it would be horrible to use the data from here.
So for my question: How do I do this in a maintainable way?

Answer 1

Your problem is that {"1" : something, "2" ; something} is not a json array, it's a json map.

In .net, you will want to deserialize that to a Dictionary<int,TObject>. Then you can process it afterwards if it really should be a `List' or an array, but you can't do that while deserializing: you got bad json in the first place, you have to deal with it.

Here is a fiddle demonstrating the thing (with the json you gave and your own classes only very slightly modified: the files property is a List<List<string>> instead of a List<String>) using Json.Net : https://dotnetfiddle.net/feqFZd

Answer 2

You must replace

public List<Number> number { get; set; }

with

public Dictionary<int,Number> number { get; set; }