CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#jsonjson.netdeserialization
CularBytes
CularBytes

Reputation: 10321

Deserialize Active campaign's beautiful json output to c# object

...and "beautiful" is sarcastic here.

When you call Active Campaign's list_view endpoint, and would like to get that in a json response, then this is the json response you get:

{
    "0": {
        "id": "4",
        "name": "Nieuwsletter 1",
        "cdate": "2018-11-22 03:44:19",
        "private": "0",
        "userid": "6",
        "subscriber_count": 2901
    },
    "1": {
        "id": "5",
        "name": "Newsletter 2",
        "cdate": "2018-11-22 05:02:41",
        "private": "0",
        "userid": "6",
        "subscriber_count": 2229
    },
    "2": {
        "id": "6",
        "name": "Newsletter 3",
        "cdate": "2018-11-22 05:02:48",
        "private": "0",
        "userid": "6",
        "subscriber_count": 638
    },
    "result_code": 1,
    "result_message": "Success: Something is returned",
    "result_output": "json"
}

Now how would I ever be able to deserialize this to an object? Doing the normal Edit => Paste Special => Paste JSON As Classes gives me an output where I end up with classes that named _2.

Also, JsonConvert throws the following error: Accessed JObject values with invalid key value: 2. Object property name expected. So it is not really able to deserialize it either. I tried to use dynamic as object type to convert to.

The only thing I can think of now is replacing the first { by [ and the last } by ], then remove all the "1" : items and then remove the last 3 properties. After that I have a basic array which is easy convertable. But I kind of hope someone has a better solution instead of diving deep into the string.indexOf and string.Replace party...

Upvotes: 0

Views: 260

Answers (2)

er-sho
er-sho

Reputation: 9771

If your key/value pair is not fixed and data must be configurable then Newtonsoft.json has one feature that to be used here and that is [JsonExtensionData]. Read more

Extension data is now written when an object is serialized. Reading and writing extension data makes it possible to automatically round-trip all JSON without adding every property to the .NET type you’re deserializing to. Only declare the properties you’re interested in and let extension data do the rest.

In your case key/value pair with 0,1,2,3.......N have dynamic data so your class will be

So create one property that collects all of your dynamic key/value pair with the attribute [JsonExtensionData]. And below I create that one with name DynamicData.

class MainObj
{
    [JsonExtensionData]
    public Dictionary<string, JToken> DynamicData { get; set; }

    public int result_code { get; set; }
    public string result_message { get; set; }
    public string result_output { get; set; }
}

And then you can deserialize your JSON like

string json = "Your json here"

MainObj mainObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MainObj>(json);

Edit:

If you want to collect your dynamic key's value to class then you can use below the class structure.

class MainObj
{
    [JsonExtensionData]
    public Dictionary<string, JToken> DynamicData { get; set; }

    [JsonIgnore]
    public Dictionary<string, ChildObj> ParsedData
    {
        get
        {
            return DynamicData.ToDictionary(x => x.Key, y => y.Value.ToObject<ChildObj>());
        }
    }

    public int result_code { get; set; }
    public string result_message { get; set; }
    public string result_output { get; set; }
}

public class ChildObj
{
    public string id { get; set; }
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string cdate { get; set; }
    public string _private { get; set; }
    public string userid { get; set; }
    public int subscriber_count { get; set; }
}

And then you can deserialize your JSON like

MainObj mainObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MainObj>(json);

And then you can access each of your deserialized data like 

int result_code = mainObj.result_code;
string result_message = mainObj.result_message;
string result_output = mainObj.result_output;

foreach (var item in mainObj.ParsedData)
{
    string key = item.Key;
    ChildObj childObj = item.Value;

    string id = childObj.id;
    string name = childObj.name;
    string cdate = childObj.cdate;
    string _private = childObj._private;
    string userid = childObj.userid;
    int subscriber_count = childObj.subscriber_count;
}

Upvotes: 3

Andrew Skirrow
Andrew Skirrow

Reputation: 3451

I'd recommend JObject from the Newtonsoft.Json library

e.g. using C# interactive

// Assuming you've installed v10.0.1 of Newtonsoft.Json using a recent version of nuget
#r "c:\Users\MyAccount\.nuget\.nuget\packages\Newtonsoft.Json\10.0.1\lib\net45\Newtonsoft.Json.dll"

using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq;
var jobj = JObject.Parse(File.ReadAllText(@"c:\code\sample.json"));
foreach (var item in jobj)
{
     if (int.TryParse(item.Key, out int value))
     {
         Console.WriteLine((string)item.Value["id"]);

         // You could then convert the object to a strongly typed version
         var listItem = item.Value.ToObject<YourObject>();
      }
}

Which outputs:

 4
 5
 6

See this page for more detail

https://www.newtonsoft.com/json/help/html/QueryingLINQtoJSON.htm

Upvotes: 2

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