Question

I want to be able to convert a List<T> into a specific JSON table-like format. In my case, the T will always be a simple object (no nested properties). Here are two examples to illustrate what I want.

Example #1: List<Person> to JSON

// C# list of Persons
var list = new List<Person>() {
  new Person() { First = "Jesse", Last = "Gavin", Twitter = "jessegavin" },
  new Person() { First = "John", Last = "Sheehan", Twitter = "johnsheehan" }
};

// I want to transform the list above into a JSON object like so
{
  columns : ["First", "Last", "Twitter"],
  rows: [
    ["Jesse", "Gavin", "jessegavin"],
    ["John", "Sheehan", "johnsheehan"]
  ]
}

Example #2: List<Address> to JSON

// C# list of Locations
var list = new List<Location>() {
  new Location() { City = "Los Angeles", State = "CA", Zip = "90210" },
  new Location() { City = "Saint Paul", State = "MN", Zip = "55101" },
};

// I want to transform the list above into a JSON object like so
{
  columns : ["City", "State", "Zip"],
  rows: [
    ["Los Angeles", "CA", "90210"],
    ["Saint Paul", "MN", "55101"]
  ]
}

Is there a way to tell JSON.net to serialize an object in this manner? If not, how could I accomplish this? Thanks.

UPDATE:

Thanks to @Hightechrider’s answer, I was able to write some code that solves the problem.

You can view a working example here https://gist.github.com/1153155

Answer 1

Using reflection you can get a list of properties for the type:

        var props = typeof(Person).GetProperties();

Given an instance of a Person p you can get an enumeration of the property values thus:

        props.Select(prop => prop.GetValue(p, null))

Wrap those up in a generic method, add your favorite Json serialization and you have the format you want.