Question

I have spent WAY too much time trying to figure out how to pull all the values I need to from my C# application using JS and JSON. It works fine when I just use simple structures, such as an array, but I need to be able to grow the list at runtime.

Right now, the best I could figure out was doing a Dictionary with an incrementing key value, and the other 3 values as a class object. However, this seems to crash out my C# application.

What would be the best way to do this?

Relevant C# Code:

public class ChatData
{
    string userName;
    string message;
    System.DateTime timestamp;

    public ChatData(string name, string msg)
    {
        userName = name;
        message = msg;
        timestamp = System.DateTime.Now;
    }
}

        else if (string.Equals(request, "getchat"))
        {
            //string since = Request.Query.since;

            Dictionary<int, ChatData> data = new Dictionary<int, ChatData>();

            data.Add(1, new ChatData("bob", "hey guys"));
            data.Add(2, new ChatData("david", "hey you"));
            data.Add(3, new ChatData("jill", "wait what"));

            return Response.AsJson(data);
        }

Relevant Javascript:

function getChatData()
{
    $.getJSON(dataSource + "?req=getchat", "", function (data)
    {
        //$.each(data, function(key, val)
        //{
            //addChatEntry(key, val);
        //})
    });
}

Answer 1

Why not simply use a typed list? Also, you’ll need a default constructor to serialize/deserialize it. Note how I’ve modified your class to use properties
as well. Note, as @rudolf_franek mentions, you can add an ID property to the ChatData class if you need to be able to link to it.

public class ChatData
{
     public ChatData()
     {
         TimeStamp = DateTime.Now;
     }
     public int ID { get; set; }
     public string Who { get; set; }
     public string Said { get; set; }
     public DateTime TimeStamp { get; set; }
}

...

var data = new List<ChatData>
{
    new ChatData { ID = 1, Who = "bob", Said = "hey guys" },
    ...
};

return Response.AsJson( data );