Question

I am trying to parse some JSON on the Windows Phone with DataContractJsonSerializer. All of the JSON responses have the same format: status, message, data. The status and message field always have the same type, but the data field contains a call-specific object. Here are some examples:

Hash

{
status: 0,
message: "No error",
data:
  {
    team: "test",
    startTime: "1969-12-31 19:00:00 -0500",
    endTime: "2000-01-01 00:00:00 -0500",
    max_photos: 30,
    max_judged_photos: 24
  }
}

List

{
status: 0,
message: "No error",
data:
  [
    {
      id: 1,
      game_id: "Test",
      description: "Test",
      points: 100
    },
    {
      id: 2,
      game_id: "Test",
      description: "Test",
      points: 1000
    }
  ]
}

I would like to parse the responses into a generic Response object containing status, message, and data. I want to then further parse the JSON in data into the correct object (hash or list). Here is what my Response class currently looks like:

[DataContract]
public class Response
{
    [DataMember(Name = "status", IsRequired=true)]
    public STATUS Status { get; set; }

    [DataMember(Name = "message", IsRequired = true)]
    public string Message { get; set; }

    [DataMember(Name = "data", IsRequired = true)]
    public ?????? Data { get; set; }
}

My question is, is there a generic JSON container I can use to hold the inner JSON in the data field (so that I can parse that seperately) or is there a better way of solving this altogether? I’d rather not have separate Response classes for each response type.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Since data is sometimes an array and sometimes a single object, you can not deserialize it to a type safe class.

But you can use Json.Net (which works on WP7) to parse the json string.

JObject json = (JObject)JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(jsonstr);
if (json["data"] is JArray)
{
    foreach(var item in json["data"])
        Console.WriteLine(item["id"]);
}else{
    Console.WriteLine(json["data"]["startTime"]);
}