Question

I am using Newtonsoft’s Json.NET to deserialize a JSON string:

var output = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>("{ 'foo': 'bar' }");

How can I check that output is empty? An example test case:

var output = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>("{ }");
Assert.IsNull(output); // fails

Answer 1

The object you get back from DeserializeObject is going to be a JObject, which has a Count property. This property tells you how many properties are on the object.

var output = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>("{ }");

if (((JObject)output).Count == 0)
{
    // The object is empty
}

This won’t tell you if a dynamic object is empty, but it will tell you if a deserialized JSON object is empty.