Deserialize JSON into C# dynamic object?

Question

Is there a way to deserialize JSON content into a C# 4 dynamic type? It would be nice to skip creating a bunch of classes in order to use the DataContractJsonSerializer.

Answer 1

I use: http://json2csharp.com/ to get A class representing the Json Object.

Input:

{
   "name":"John",
   "age":31,
   "city":"New York",
   "Childs":[
      {
         "name":"Jim",
         "age":11
      },
      {
         "name":"Tim",
         "age":9
      }
   ]
}

Output:

public class Child
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public int age { get; set; }
}

public class Person
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public int age { get; set; }
    public string city { get; set; }
    public List<Child> Childs { get; set; }
}

After that I use Newtonsoft.Json to fill the Class:

using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace GitRepositoryCreator.Common
{
    class JObjects
    {
        public static string Get(object p_object)
        {
            return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(p_object);
        }
        internal static T Get<T>(string p_object)
        {
            return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(p_object);
        }
    }
}

You can call it like that:

Person jsonClass = JObjects.Get<Person>(stringJson);

string stringJson = JObjects.Get(jsonClass);

PS:

If your json variable name is no valid C# name (name starts with $) you can fix that like this:

public class Exception
{
   [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "$id")]
   public string id { get; set; }
   public object innerException { get; set; }
   public string message { get; set; }
   public string typeName { get; set; }
   public string typeKey { get; set; }
   public int errorCode { get; set; }
   public int eventId { get; set; }
}

Answer 2

.Net 4.0 has a built-in library to do this:

using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
JavaScriptSerializer jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
var d=jss.Deserialize<dynamic>(str);

This is the simplest way.

Answer 3

For that I would use JSON.NET to do the low-level parsing of the JSON stream and then build up the object hierarchy out of instances of the ExpandoObject class.

Answer 4

use DataSet(C#) With javascript simple function for create json stream with DataSet input create json like(multi table dataset) [[{a:1,b:2,c:3},{a:3,b:5,c:6}],[{a:23,b:45,c:35},{a:58,b:59,c:45}]]

just client side use eval for example

var d=eval('[[{a:1,b:2,c:3},{a:3,b:5,c:6}],[{a:23,b:45,c:35},{a:58,b:59,c:45}]]')

then use

d[0][0].a //out 1 from table 0 row 0

d[1][1].b //out 59 from table 1 row 1

//create by Behnam Mohammadi And Saeed Ahmadian
public string jsonMini(DataSet ds)
{
    int t=0, r=0, c=0;
    string stream = "[";

    for (t = 0; t < ds.Tables.Count; t++)
    {
        stream += "[";
        for (r = 0; r < ds.Tables[t].Rows.Count; r++)
        {
            stream += "{";
            for (c = 0; c < ds.Tables[t].Columns.Count; c++)
            {
                stream += ds.Tables[t].Columns[c].ToString() + ":'" + ds.Tables[t].Rows[r][c].ToString() + "',";
            }
            if(c>0)
                stream = stream.Substring(0, stream.Length - 1);
            stream += "},";
        }
        if(r>0)
            stream = stream.Substring(0, stream.Length - 1);
        stream += "],";
    }
    if(t>0)
        stream = stream.Substring(0, stream.Length - 1);
    stream += "];";
    return stream;
}

Answer 5

Deserializing in JSON.NET can be dynamic using the JObject class, which is included in that library. My JSON string represents these classes:

public class Foo {
   public int Age {get;set;}
   public Bar Bar {get;set;}
}

public class Bar {
   public DateTime BDay {get;set;}
}

Now we deserialize the string WITHOUT referencing the above classes:

var dyn = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JObject>(jsonAsFooString);

JProperty propAge = dyn.Properties().FirstOrDefault(i=>i.Name == "Age");
if(propAge != null) {
    int age = int.Parse(propAge.Value.ToString());
    Console.WriteLine("age=" + age);
}

//or as a one-liner:
int myage = int.Parse(dyn.Properties().First(i=>i.Name == "Age").Value.ToString());

Or if you want to go deeper:

var propBar = dyn.Properties().FirstOrDefault(i=>i.Name == "Bar");
if(propBar != null) {
    JObject o = (JObject)propBar.First();
    var propBDay = o.Properties().FirstOrDefault (i => i.Name=="BDay");
    if(propBDay != null) {
        DateTime bday = DateTime.Parse(propBDay.Value.ToString());
        Console.WriteLine("birthday=" + bday.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"));
    }
}

//or as a one-liner:
DateTime mybday = DateTime.Parse(((JObject)dyn.Properties().First(i=>i.Name == "Bar").First()).Properties().First(i=>i.Name == "BDay").Value.ToString());

See post for a complete example.

Answer 6

To get an ExpandoObject:

using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters;

Container container = JsonConvert.Deserialize<Container>(jsonAsString, new ExpandoObjectConverter());