Convert Json to C# Object using Json.net

Question

I've searched many a web site, and deployed various solutions to my web server, only to find that nothing I have come across so far actually works. I have the following JSON:

["{\"EntryNo\":4,\"Title\":\"New Title\",\"Summary\":\"New Summary\",\"Body\":\"New Body\",\"CreatedOn\":\"2017-03-03T03:53:16.2955903+00:00\",\"CreatedBy\":\"Jim Jones\",\"ModifiedBy\":\"Jim Jones\",\"ModifiedOn\":\"2017-02-25T07:06:32.517\",\"Deleted\":false,\"TypeId\":1}",
"{\"EntryNo\":5,\"Title\":\"Old Title\",\"Summary\":\"Old Summary\",\"Body\":\"Old Body\",\"CreatedOn\":\"2017-03-03T03:53:16.2955903+00:00\",\"CreatedBy\":\"Ben Jones\",\"ModifiedBy\":\"Ben Jones\",\"ModifiedOn\":\"2017-02-25T07:06:32.593\",\"Deleted\":false,\"TypeId\":1}"
]

My Model looks like the following:

public class BlogVM
{
    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "EntryNo")]
    public int EntryNo { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Title")]
    public string Title { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Summary")]
    public string Summary { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Body")]
    public string Body { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "CreatedOn")]
    public DateTime CreatedOn { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "ModifiedOn")]
    public DateTime ModifiedOn { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "CreatedBy")]
    public string CreatedBy { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "ModifiedBy")]
    public string ModifiedBy { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "Deleted")]
    public bool Deleted { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "TypeId")]
    public int? TypeId { get; set; }
}

and my controller method is admittedly a hodgepodge...

public async Task<ActionResult> _ActualBlogContent()
{
    HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
    client.BaseAddress = new System.Uri("wwww.myapiaddresshere.com");
    client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));

    HttpResponseMessage response = client.GetAsync("api/entry/").Result;
    if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
    {
        var dataObjects = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
        List<BlogVM> pdone = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<BlogVM>>(dataObjects.Result);
    }

    return View();
}

I'm getting an error message of:

Could not cast or convert from System.String to Models.Blog.BlogVM

What am I missing? Also, fwiw json2Csharp does not work. All json I pass it fails....But if I validate the son on jsonlint.com, it passes validation testing.

I'm really confused as to what's missing here. Am I just using the framework incorrectly?

Answer 1

I don't think your JSON is as good as you think it is. I couldn't get what you posted to pass validation, because of some errant quotes in various places.

I ran what you posted through this JSON formatter, and it gave me all kinds of errors, including the error that it was expecting a string. This is because of the ["{ at the very beginning. When deserializing, it expects a brace ({), but you gave it a quote ("), hence the error message. You have a few places like this where a brace is expected, but a quote is found.

Here is some cleaned up JSON. This should deserialize just fine.

[
   {
      "EntryNo":4,
      "Title":"New Title",
      "Summary":"New Summary",
      "Body":"New Body",
      "CreatedOn":"2017-03-03T03:53:16.2955903+00:00",
      "CreatedBy":"Jim Jones",
      "ModifiedBy":"Jim Jones",
      "ModifiedOn":"2017-02-25T07:06:32.517",
      "Deleted":false,
      "TypeId":1
   },
   {
      "EntryNo":5,
      "Title":"Old Title",
      "Summary":"Old Summary",
      "Body":"Old Body",
      "CreatedOn":"2017-03-03T03:53:16.2955903+00:00",
      "CreatedBy":"Ben Jones",
      "ModifiedBy":"Ben Jones",
      "ModifiedOn":"2017-02-25T07:06:32.593",
      "Deleted":false,
      "TypeId":1
   }
]

The real root of your problem is where that ill-formatted JSON came from.