Question

I am trying to setup and consume an asp.net webapi rest application and consume it from another project.

I have made a simple helper to call the service like

public static string GetApiResponse(string apiMethod,Dictionary<string,string>queryString=null)
    {
        using (var client = new WebClient())
        {
            client.Headers.Add("ApiKey", ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ApiKey"]);
            //add any query string values into the client
            if (queryString != null)
            {
                foreach (var query in queryString)
                {
                    client.QueryString.Add(query.Key, query.Value);
                }
            }
            try
            {
               string url = string.Format("{0}{1}", ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ApiBaseUrl"],apiMethod);
               return(client.DownloadString(url));
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                return ex.Message;
            }

        }
    }

I am consuming it from my controller in a different project like

  private IEnumerable<CustomerModel> CustomerDetails()
    {
        var json = ApiRestHelper.GetApiResponse("Customer/Get");

        var data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<CustomerViewModel>(json, new JsonSerializerSettings
                                                                          {

                                                                          });

The returned data from the service is looking like

[{"CustomerId":"24a62bf8-7a4e-4837-859d-1f04dc983011","FirstName":"Joe","LastName":"Bloggs","StoreCustomerId":null}]

My CustomerViewModel is

 public class CustomerViewModel
{
    public IEnumerable<CustomerModel> Customers { get; set; }
}

I can see the data that is returned is an array and I am trying to convert it to the list. I get an error

Cannot deserialize JSON array (i.e. [1,2,3]) into type ‘WebApplication.Models.ViewModels.CustomerViewModel’.

The deserialized type must be an array or implement a collection interface like IEnumerable, ICollection or IList.

What do I need to change to allow the deserialization into my view model?

Answer 1

I was trying to do it wrong.

        var data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<CustomerModel>>(json, new JsonSerializerSettings
                                                                          {

                                                                          });

Does the trick