How do I get a property from a list when parsing JSON in C# with JSON.NET?

Question

I'm able to parse simple properties using JSON.NET with this C# code:

Code C#

    WebClient c = new WebClient();
    var data = c.DownloadString("http://localhost/json1.json");
    JObject o = JObject.Parse(data);
    listBox1.Items.Add(o["name"]);
    listBox1.Items.Add(o["email"][0]);
    listBox1.Items.Add(o["email"][1]);
    listBox1.Items.Add(o["website"]["blog"]);

json1.json

{
    "name": "Fname Lname",
    "email": [
            "email@gmail.com",
            "email@hotmail.com"
    ],
    "website":
    {
            "blog": "example.com"
    }
}

json2.json

{
"name": "Fname Lname",
"email": [
    "email@gmail.com",
    "email@hotmail.com"
],
"website":
{
    "blog": "example.com"
},
"faculty":
{
    "department": [
    {
        "name": "department.name", 
        "location": "department.location"
    }
    ]
}
}

From the second JSON file, I'm not able to get name and location from the department. How do I do that in C#?

• name : department.name
  
• location: department.location

Answer 1

Your problem is that department is an array of objects (though it happens to just contain one item here), but you're not accessing it like it is. You can use o["faculty"]["department"][0]["name"] to get your data.

You might want to use classes (here are ones auto-converted with http://json2csharp.com/ ) to more easily work with your data.

public class Website
{
    public string blog { get; set; }
}

public class Department
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string location { get; set; }
}

public class Faculty
{
    public List<Department> department { get; set; }
}

public class RootObject
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public List<string> email { get; set; }
    public Website website { get; set; }
    public Faculty faculty { get; set; }
}

Then you can get all of the data (instead of hoping the fixed indexes are right, and that you didn't make a typo in the property names) with this code:

WebClient c = new WebClient();
var data = c.DownloadString("http://localhost/json1.json");
var o = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(data);

listBox1.Items.Add(o.name);
foreach (var emailAddr in o.email)
    listBox1.Items.Add(emailAddr);
listBox1.Items.Add(o.website.blog);
foreach (var dept in o.faculty.department)
{
    listBox1.Items.Add(dept.name);
    listBox1.Items.Add(dept.location);
}

Answer 2

yourjsonobject.faculty.department[0].name;
yourjsonobject.faculty.department[0].location;

Here is some jsfiddle to help you with this:

http://jsfiddle.net/sCCrJ/

 var r = JSON.parse('{"name": "Fname Lname","email": [    "email@gmail.com",       "email@hotmail.com"],"website":{    "blog": "example.com"},"faculty":{    "department": [    {        "name": "department.name",         "location": "department.location"    }    ]}}');
alert(r.faculty.department[0].name);
alert(r.faculty.department[0].location);

   for (var i = 0; i < r.faculty.department.length; i++) {
       alert(r.faculty.department[i].name);
   }