How to parse JSON child nodes list that have different names using Newtonsoft.json in C#

Question

I am looking to parse JSON into a C# List. The problem is that the data I am trying to parse is not coming in Array format. Following is the sample JSON

   {
   "results":{
      "records":{
         "record:8545314564":{
            "name":"record 1",
            "description":"description for record 1"
         },
         "record:2254698789":{
            "name":"record 2",
            "description":"description for record 2"
         },
         "record:7454687851":{
            "name":"record 3",
            "description":"description for record 3"
         }
      }
   }
}

My Model class looks something like this

public class Record
{
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public string Description { get; set; }
}

What I am looking for is to create a

List<Record> Records

I don't care about the name of the records child node (ie record:8545314564, record:2254698789 etc). All I care about is the name and description property inside each record node.

I would really appreciate if someone can please provide a sample code in C# to achieve this desired output.

Answer 1

And another alternative:

using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq;
...
var jObject = JObject.Parse(yourJsonString);
var records = jObject["results"]["records"]
    .Children()
    .Children()
    .Select(i => i.ToObject<Record>())
    .ToList();

You can find relevant Json.NET documentation here: https://www.newtonsoft.com/json/help/html/SerializingJSONFragments.htm

Answer 2

By using a Dictionary , you can use a dynamic record name as a key.

public class Root
{
    [JsonProperty("results")]
    public Result Results { get; set; }
}

public class Result
{
    [JsonProperty("records")]
    public Dictionary<string, Record> Records { get; set; }
}

public class Record
{
    [JsonProperty("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("description")]
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

var data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Root>(json);

Answer 3

You could do the following.

var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(jsonString);
var recordCollection = result.results.records.Values.ToList();

Where RootObject is defined as

public class RootObject
{
    public ResultObject results { get; set; }
}

public class ResultObject
{
    public Dictionary<string, RecordObject> records { get; set; }
}

public class RecordObject
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string description { get; set; }
}

Output

Answer 4

You can parse the Json and then iterate through the tokens for each property value.

// assuming json is your json string
JObject obj = JObject.Parse(json);
JToken sec = obj["results"]["records"];

 foreach (JToken token in sec)
 {
      string name = token.First()["name"].ToString();
      string description = token.First()["description"].ToString();
 }