Deserialize unpredictable JSON property as string

Question

I have a third-party API response with one very unpredictable property, the rest are OK.

Sometimes the property is a full nested object, sometimes it's a blank string, sometimes it is an array... The docs are not very good.

Here are some sample responses, but there could be more variations:

"errors": {
    "invalid_player_ids" : ["5fdc92b2-3b2a-11e5-ac13-8fdccfe4d986", "00cb73f8-5815-11e5-ba69-f75522da5528"]
  }

"errors": ["Notification content must not be null for any languages."]

"errors": ""

Luckily this property is not too important, but a nice-to-have for logging purposes.

Is it possible to deserialize the model as usual but for this particular property errors, deserialize the whole thing into a string property? Like so?

public string Errors { get; set; }

Can you give an example of the json you would receive, and the resulting data type (with values) you want in the end? — gunr2171
– gunr2171, Commented Mar 27, 2019 at 17:07
I do not think dynamic is useful because I cannot predict structure, so I won't be able to read it. I would like to get a string of the object for that property. — FailedUnitTest
– FailedUnitTest, Commented Mar 27, 2019 at 17:43

Brian Rogers · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-27 18:10:11Z

4

I would use a JToken to handle the unpredictable property. It can handle any JSON, and if you need to log it out, you can just use ToString() to do it.

public class Response
{
    public JToken Errors { get; set; }
}

Then:

Response resp = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Response>(json);
Console.WriteLine("Errors: " + resp.Errors.ToString());

Here is a working demo: https://dotnetfiddle.net/5jXHjV

edited Mar 27, 2019 at 18:10

answered Mar 27, 2019 at 17:54

Brian Rogers

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1 Comment

FailedUnitTest Over a year ago

Excellent, that did what I needed. Thank you.

Shiva · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-27 18:18:11Z

Like @stuartd has stated, a dynamic property also does the same thing.

dotNetFiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/dVzsZm

Here's the working code.

I created a helper readonly property that returns ToString of the dynamic property. You could also do without it.

using System;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace DynamicErrorsJson
{
    public class ApiResponse
    {
        public dynamic Errors { get; set; }

        public string ErrorsString
        {
            get
            {
                string value = string.Empty;
                if (Errors != null)
                {
                    value = Errors.ToString();
                }

                return value;
            }
        }
    }

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var listErrorsJson = @"{ ""errors"": {""invalid_player_ids"" : [""5fdc92b2-3b2a-11e5-ac13-8fdccfe4d986"", ""00cb73f8-5815-11e5-ba69-f75522da5528""] } }";
            var stringErrorsJson = @"{ ""errors"": [""Notification content must not be null for any languages.""] }";
            var noErrorsJson = @"{""errors"": """" }";

            var listErrorsResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ApiResponse>(listErrorsJson);
            var stringErrorsJsonResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ApiResponse>(stringErrorsJson);
            var noErrorsJsonResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ApiResponse>(noErrorsJson);

            Console.WriteLine("listErrorsJson Response: {0}\n\t", listErrorsResponse.ErrorsString);
            Console.WriteLine("stringErrorsJson Response: {0}\n\t", stringErrorsJsonResponse.ErrorsString);
            Console.WriteLine("noErrorsJson Response: {0}\n\t", noErrorsJsonResponse.ErrorsString);
            Console.WriteLine();
            Console.WriteLine("Press a key to exit...");

            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

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Deserialize unpredictable JSON property as string

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dotNetFiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/dVzsZm

Here's the working code.

Here's the output

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2 Answers 2

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dotNetFiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/dVzsZm

Here's the working code.

Here's the output

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