Question

So I am trying to parse some JSON that is returned to me by a third party api that looks something like:

{
    "status":"ok",
    "links":
    [
        {
            "link":
            {
                "link_name":"Sample",
                "link_id":"9999"
            }
        },

    ],//and so on with other nested properties

I have created classes to map the JSON to

    [DataContract]
    public class JsonTestResults
    {
        [DataMember]
        public string status { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public IEnumerable<Link> links { get; set; }
    }
    [DataContract]
    public class Link
    {
        [DataMember]
        public string link_name { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public string link_id { get; set; }
    }

And I’m pushing the response through this deserializer (taken from this post

public  T Deserialise<T>( string json )
        {
            T obj = Activator.CreateInstance<T>( );
            using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream( Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes( json ) ))
            {
                DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer( obj.GetType( ) );
                obj = (T)serializer.ReadObject( ms ); 
                return obj;
            }
        }

However, my deserialized results are showing the contents of Link[] as null. (there is a Link object for each one returned, but the link_name and link_id are null.)

I’ve checked out this, this, this, this and this, but haven’t been able to solve this issue. I am looking for a solution that doesn’t require a third party library. (per my lead dev).

I don’t believe it’s a problem with the classes matching the JSON, but I can post the full code if anyone would like to review it.

Answer 1

You need one more class to deserialize it correctly

public class JsonTestResults
{
    public string status { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<TempLink> links { get; set; }
}

public class TempLink
{
    public Link link;
}

public class Link
{
    public string link_name { get; set; }
    public string link_id { get; set; }
}

I tested it with Json.Net and worked.

var obj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject <JsonTestResults>(json);

JavaScriptSerializer also works

var obj2 = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<JsonTestResults>(json);