Json Parsing in c# using Json.Net

Question

{"Posts":
          [{"id":"1",
            "title":"Bibidh prothom khondo",
            "content":"sjih sdkljjdsf kdjsfjks",
            "author":"","last_update":"23 june 2013",
            "Comments":
                [{"id":"1",
                  "content":"sjih sdkljjdsf kdjsfjks",
                  "author":"","last_update":"23 june 2013"}]},
            {"id":"2",
             "title":"Bibidh prothom khondo",
             "content":"sjih sdkljjdsf kdjsfjks",
             "author":"",
             "last_update":"24 june 2013",
             "Comments":[{"id":"1","content":"sjih sdkljjdsf kdjsfjks","author":"","last_update":"23 june 2013"}]},{"id":"3","title":"Bibidh prothom khondo","content":"sjih sdkljjdsf kdjsfjks","author":"","last_update":"25 june 2013"}]}

I am trying to parse this json. & For this I my code is:

public class Attributes
    {
        [JsonProperty("id")]
        public string ID { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("title")]
        public string TITLE { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("content")]
        public string CONTENT { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("author")]
        public string AUTHOR { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("last_update")]
        public string LAST_UPDATE { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("Comments")]
        public string[] COMMENTS { get; set; }
    }

    public class DataJsonAttributeContainer
    {
        public List<Attributes> attributes { get; set; }
    }

    public static T DeserializeFromJson<T>(string json)
    {
        T deserializedProduct = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(json);
        return deserializedProduct;
    }

I have tried both of this following way:

var container = DeserializeFromJson<DataJsonAttributeContainer>(e.Result);

& var container = DeserializeFromJson<List<Attributes>>(e.Result);

Json string sownloads completely fine but program crashes in while deserializing from json string. I guess, I have made a very silly mistake here & I can not figure it out. Can anyone please help me in this regard? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

There are pages that help you with generating your data model from JSON (though it's not quite as fancy as the way F# folks can do it..). When pasting your JSON on this website and generating the data model the following classes pop out.

public class Comment
{
    public string id { get; set; }
    public string content { get; set; }
    public string author { get; set; }
    public string last_update { get; set; }
}

public class Post
{
    public string id { get; set; }
    public string title { get; set; }
    public string content { get; set; }
    public string author { get; set; }
    public string last_update { get; set; }
    public List<Comment> Comments { get; set; }
}

public class RootObject
{
    public List<Post> Posts { get; set; }
}

I guess you have to call your parser then as follows and grab your attributes out of it:

var container = DeserializeFromJson<RootObject>(e.Result);

Please note that you can rename the classes as you wish and use those names instead of the generated ones.

---

Answer 2

u are simply excluding Posts when deserializing , if u want to deserialize inner items of Posts , than u have to mention it in deserialization

try this :

var parsed = JObject.Parse(e.Result);
var container = DeserializeFromJson<List<Attributes>>(parsed["Posts"]);

or

var parsed = JsonSerializer.DeserializeFromString<Dictionary<string,string>>(e.Result);
var container = DeserializeFromJson<List<Attributes>>(parsed["Posts"]);