Question

Maybe I am repeating this question but I am trying this out for the first time and I can’t find anything exactly like my situation..

I am coding in C# and using JSON.NET to deserialize a json. The json file is coming from twitter as a response to this GET request:
https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/home_timeline.json?include_entities=true

The json is a list of 20 latest tweets (json objects) from a given user’s twitter timeline and the format of a single json object is like this:

{
"created_at": "Thu Sep 20 10:25:39 +0000 2012",
"id": 248729631476314100,
"id_str": "248729631476314112",
"text": "Ask the experts and learn what's new with v.2.2 at  at #MongoDBPune (http://t.co/o5BA7zd6) and #MongoDBBangalore (http://t.co/7q3E2MBq)",
"source": "<a href=\"http://www.socialrithmic.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">Socialrithmic</a>",
"truncated": false,
"in_reply_to_status_id": null,
"in_reply_to_status_id_str": null,
"in_reply_to_user_id": null,
"in_reply_to_user_id_str": null,
"in_reply_to_screen_name": null,
"user": {
  "id": 18080585,
  "id_str": "18080585",
  "name": "mongodb",
  "screen_name": "MongoDB",
  "location": "",
  "url": "http://mongodb.org/",
  "description": "High-performance, open source, schema-free document-oriented  database   | www.facebook.com/MongoDB",
  "protected": false,
  "followers_count": 24999,
  "friends_count": 16,
  "listed_count": 1582,
  "created_at": "Fri Dec 12 17:21:18 +0000 2008",
  "favourites_count": 6,
  "utc_offset": -18000,
  "time_zone": "Eastern Time (US & Canada)",
  "geo_enabled": true,
  "verified": false,
  "statuses_count": 1669,
  "lang": "en",
  "contributors_enabled": false,
  "is_translator": false,
  "profile_background_color": "529747",
  "profile_background_image_url": "http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/619655093/767dji3m3k684nza7w9z.png",
  "profile_background_image_url_https": "https://si0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/619655093/767dji3m3k684nza7w9z.png",
  "profile_background_tile": false,
  "profile_image_url": "http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/2452709870/wo2h8r0qy8d5lsxe5lgd_normal.png",
  "profile_image_url_https": "https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2452709870/wo2h8r0qy8d5lsxe5lgd_normal.png",
  "profile_link_color": "43B02A",
  "profile_sidebar_border_color": "829D5E",
  "profile_sidebar_fill_color": "99CC33",
  "profile_text_color": "3E4415",
  "profile_use_background_image": true,
  "default_profile": false,
  "default_profile_image": false,
  "following": true,
  "follow_request_sent": null,
  "notifications": null
},
"geo": null,
"coordinates": null,
"place": null,
"contributors": null,
"retweet_count": 1,
"entities": {
  "hashtags": [
    {
      "text": "MongoDBPune",
      "indices": [
        55,
        67
      ]
    },
    {
      "text": "MongoDBBangalore",
      "indices": [
        95,
        112
      ]
    }
  ],
  "urls": [
    {
      "url": "http://t.co/o5BA7zd6",
      "expanded_url": "http://soc.ai/ZV",
      "display_url": "soc.ai/ZV",
      "indices": [
        69,
        89
      ]
    },
    {
      "url": "http://t.co/7q3E2MBq",
      "expanded_url": "http://soc.ai/ZW",
      "display_url": "soc.ai/ZW",
      "indices": [
        114,
        134
      ]
    }
  ],
  "user_mentions": []
},
"favorited": false,
"retweeted": false,
"possibly_sensitive": false

}

I use this code to get the (deserialized) list:

List<JsonObject> list = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<JsonObject>>(response);

where ‘response’ holds my json.When I inserted a breakpoint and observed the json objects inside ‘list’, I found this:

{
“created_at”: “Thu Sep 20 10:25:39 +0000 2012”,
“id”: 248729631476314100,
“id_str”: “248729631476314112”,
“text”: “Ask the experts and learn what’s new with v.2.2 at at #MongoDBPune (http://t.co/o5BA7zd6) and #MongoDBBangalore (http://t.co/7q3E2MBq)”,
“source”: “Socialrithmic”,
“truncated”: false,
“in_reply_to_status_id”: null,
“in_reply_to_status_id_str”: null,
“in_reply_to_user_id”: null,
“in_reply_to_user_id_str”: null,
“in_reply_to_screen_name”: null,
“user”: [
[
[]
],
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],
“geo”: null,
“coordinates”: null,
“place”: null,
“contributors”: null,
“retweet_count”: 1,
“entities”: [
[
[
[
[
[]
],
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[],
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]
],
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[
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[],
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],
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[],
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]
]
]
],
[
[]
]
],
“favorited”: false,
“retweeted”: false,
“possibly_sensitive”: false
}

I intend to collect ALL the hashtags from all the 20 json objects..So essentially I need to navigate inside entities to hashtags to text. But as seen above, the deserialization is only partial. It is not deserializing any nested stuff.

How do I fix this? Please help!

Answer 1

Good heavens! Got it from this stackoverflow question. Thanks @chill182!

Here’s how you do it:

 ArrayList hashtags = new ArrayList();

            JArray jsonDat = JArray.Parse(response); 
            for(int x = 0; x < jsonDat.Count(); x++) 
            {
                JObject entity = JObject.Parse(jsonDat[x]["entities"].ToString());
                JArray arrHashtags = JArray.Parse(entity["hashtags"].ToString());
                for(int i=0; i < arrHashtags.Count(); i++)
                {
                    JObject hashtagstuff = JObject.Parse(arrHashtags[i].ToString());
                    hashtags.Add(hashtagstuff["text"].ToString());
                }
            }

Don’t forget to include Linq in the namespace 🙂

using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq;