Question

What would be the best way to generate the json below using a .net web service? I plan to call this though jquery on the front end.

I’m not seeing if I have to piece it together by hand or if there’s an object structure in C# I could use that would equate to this when returned.

{'Option 1': {'Suboption':2},'Option 2': {'Suboption 2': {'Subsub 1':5, 'Subsub 2':6}}}

Right now I have the data formatted like this

Id  |   Text    |  ParentId
1     Option1       null
2     SubOption      1
3     Option2       null
4     SubOption2     3
5     SubSub1        4
6     SubSub2        4

But I can change the data structure if it would make it easier to generate the json.

EDIT

---

Final solution is loop with string builder to form up the JSON.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You need a recursive data structure to support the nesting.

public class Item
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Text { get; set; }
    public Item SubItem { get; set; }
}

var myObject = new Item
{
    Id = 1, 
    Text = "Some Text",
    SubItem = new Item { Id = 2, Text = "SubItem" }
}

var serializer = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
string json = serializer.Serialize(myObject);