Handling Json Deserialization with multiple lines

Question

My application expects Json files coming in two different structure. One file where each line is a complete json and other file which is a Json file. For ex: one file will have this structure

{"Logging": {"LogLevel": {"Default": "Warning", "System": "Warning", "Microsoft": "Warning" }}}

and other file with this structure:

{"Logging": {"LogLevel": {"Default": "Warning",
      "System": "Warning",
      "Microsoft": "Warning"
    }}}

my below code does the deserialization and it works for first structure but fails for other file saying error as

Unexpected end when reading token. Path ''."}

My code:

foreach( var line in lines )
            {
   var data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JObject>( line);}

I would like to know how can I fix this so that it handles files of both types?

Answer 1

You're reading each line of your JSON file into the data variable trying to parse each line.

So it tries to parse line 1, which is {"Logging": {"LogLevel": {"Default": "Warning", . and since that is not a valid JSON object the parsing fails.

Instead use File.ReadAllText to read the entire file into a single string, then parse the string. Or simply Join the string array back into a single string:

 var data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JObject>(string.Join(Environment.NewLine,lines));}