C# Partial deserialization and full serialization

Question

I have a json file in C#. It's 70mb of data. I want to read it into a Windows Forms application with JSON.net, edit some of the data and save it back out. My problem is I don't want to create ALL of the data structures for this JSON file but I DO want to create SOME of them. When I reserialize the file I want all the changes from the data structures I did create without losing the data for the structures I didn't. Any idea if this is possible? I hope my question is clear.

Answer 1

I suggest you use the XPath equivalent for Json. With Json.NET you can parse the string and create a dynamic object.

With SelectToken you can query values, or using Linq .

For the example I will assume a json string that contains the serialized object.

var o = Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject.Parse(jsonString);
o.SelectToken("TheNodeToChange").Replace("TheNewValue");
var updatedJsonString = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(o);

This will deserialize the entire object and you do need to know the node to change. But you don't have to implement the complete object model.