Question

I’m trying to deserialize the following JSON response:

[{"pollid":"1", "question":"This is a test", "start":"2011-06-28", "end":"2012-03-21", "category":"Roads", "0":"Yes", "1":"No"} … ]

A problem arises, however, in the fact that the number of parameters following “category” can vary from 0 to 10. Meaning all the following are possible JSON responses:

[{"pollid":"1", "question":"This is a test", "start":"2011-06-28", "end":"2012-03-21", "category":"Roads"} … ]
[{"pollid":"1", "question":"This is a test", "start":"2011-06-28", "end":"2012-03-21", "category":"Roads", "0":"Yes", "1":"No"} … ]
[{"pollid":"1", "question":"This is a test", "start":"2011-06-28", "end":"2012-03-21", "category":"Roads", "0":"Bad", "1":"OK", "2":"Good", "3":"Very good"} … ]

I’m deserializing responses to objects of the following form:

class Poll
    {
        public int pollid { get; set; }
        public string question { get; set; }
        public DateTime start { get; set; }
        public DateTime end { get; set; }
        public string category { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("0")]
        public string polloption0 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("1")]
        public string polloption1 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("2")]
        public string polloption2 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("3")]
        public string polloption3 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("4")]
        public string polloption4 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("5")]
        public string polloption5 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("6")]
        public string polloption6 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("7")]
        public string polloption7 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("8")]
        public string polloption8 { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("9")]
        public string polloption9 { get; set; }
    }

My questions is: Is there perhaps a better way to handle the storing of a varying number of parameters? Having 10 class properties which may or may not be used (depending on the response) seems like such a “hack”.

Any help would be truly appreciated!

Many thanks,
Ted

Answer 1

You can either hold the variable number of properties in and Array

Have something like

List<string> ();

where you put all of polloption1, polloption2 …

Or you could deserialize the json to a dynamic type

dynamic d = JObject.Parse(json);

And access the properties which you know exist

d.pollid, d.start, d.category ...