Question

I’m receiving a Json string back from a http request that looks something like this:

{
  "info":
     [
        {
           "calls":0,
           "errors":"[error1, error2, error3]",
           "messages":0,
           "mail":3
        }
    ],
 "received":5,
 "valid":3
}

The entity I’m trying to deserialize into is structured about the same

class ResponseEntity
{
    private Info info;        
    private int received;
    private int valid;

    [JsonProperty("info")]
    public Info Info
    {
        get { return info; }
        set { info = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty("valid")]
    public int valid
    {
        get { return valid; }
        set { valid = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty("received")]
    public int received
    {
        get { return received; }
        set { received = value; }
    }

    public class Info
    {
        private int calls;
        private List<string> errors;
        private int messages;
        private int mail;

        [JsonProperty("calls")]
        public int Calls
        {
            get { return calls; }
            set { calls = value; }
        }

        [JsonProperty("messages")]
        public int Messages
        {
            get { return messages; }
            set { messages = value; }
        }

        [JsonProperty("errors")]
        public List<string> Errors
        {
            get { return errors; }
            set { errors = value; }
        }

        [JsonProperty("mail")]
        public int Mail
        {
            get { return mail; }
            set { mail = value; }
        }
    }
}

When I try to deserialize it though I’m getting an exception

ResponseEntity ent = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ResponseEntity>(json) as ResponseEntity;
Cannot deserialize JSON array into type 'CSharpRestService.ResponseEntity+Info'.

Can anybody see what I’m doing wrong? I’m thinking the ‘errors’ json key is messing things up, but I also tried a string array.

Answer 1

My test code would not compile with the nested Info class (due to a property naming conflict) so I removed it from within the ResposeEntity class.

Along with this I fixed some issues with your JSON (your info object was an array and the strings in your errors array needed to be in quotes).

see below:

JSON

{
    info":
        {
            "calls":0,
            "errors":["error1", "error2", "error3"],
            "messages":0,
            "mail":3
        },
    "received":5,
    "valid":3
}

Classes

class ResponseEntity
{
    private Info info;
    private int received;
    private int valid;

    [JsonProperty("info")]
    public Info Info
    {
        get { return info; }
        set { info = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty("valid")]
    public int Valid
    {
        get { return valid; }
        set { valid = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty("received")]
    public int Received
    {
        get { return received; }
        set { received = value; }
    }
}

public class Info
{
    private int calls;
    private List<string> errors;
    private int messages;
    private int mail;

    [JsonProperty("calls")]
    public int Calls
    {
        get { return calls; }
        set { calls = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty("messages")]
    public int Messages
    {
        get { return messages; }
        set { messages = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty("errors")]
    public List<string> Errors
    {
        get { return errors; }
        set { errors = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty("mail")]
    public int Mail
    {
        get { return mail; }
        set { mail = value; }
    }
}

Test Code

string json = "{\"info\":{\"calls\":0,\"errors\":[\"error1\", \"error2\", \"error3\"],\"messages\":0,\"mail\":3},\"received\":5,\"valid\":3}";

ResponseEntity ent = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ResponseEntity>(json) as ResponseEntity;

Hope this helps.