Strange JSON Format - What would be best handling? - c#

I'm fairly new to rest apis and tried to follow some simple tutorials. Using some test Uri's I get
a response for a server-object that looks like this:
{
"server": {
"id": 123456,
"name": "srv-ubuntu-01",
"status": "running",
"created": "2021-01-11T13:04:24+00:00"
}
}
Usually I'd be able to deserialize this using NewtonSoft.Json with
var server = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<XServer>(jsonString);
using given class:
public class XServer
{
[JsonProperty("id")]
public int Id { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("name")]
public String Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("status")]
public String Status { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("created")]
public DateTime DateCreate { get; set; }
}
However, in this case this doesen't work because the json response from the server holds the server object as a "sub-object" ((?) I don't know the correct term). So I figured I could use following code as a workaround:
var def = new { server = new Object() };
var defObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeAnonymousType(jsonString, def);
var obj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<XServer>(defObj.server.ToString());
But that can't be it, right? Obviously there is something I'm missing... at least I think so. Any input is appreciated, as mentioned, I'm a beginner, eager to learn ;)

Your Root Object has the key, server which has the object XServer.
Deserialize to RootObject to access the server object, 'XServer'.
public class RootObject {
[JsonProperty("server")]
public XServer Server {get; set;}
}
var obj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(jsonString);
XServer server = obj.Server;

=========== Solution ===========
So using #madreflections input I came to following solution, which works perfectly fine:
public class XServerRootObject
{
[JsonProperty("server")]
public XServer Server { get; set; }
}
public class XServer
{
[JsonProperty("id")]
public int Id { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("name")]
public String Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("status")]
public String Status { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("created")]
public DateTime DateCreate { get; set; }
}
Using the root object as following:
public XServer GetServer(int id)
{
var req = new RestRequest("/servers/" + id, Method.GET, DataFormat.Json);
req.AddHeader("authorization", "Bearer " + _token);
var json = _client.Get(req).Content;
var srvRoot = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<XServerRootObject>(json);
return srvRoot.Server;
}

Related

Deserialize JSon with RestSharp where the name starts with an #

I have a json response from an API that returns back with a name value where which starts with an #.
For example:
{
"#id": "Something",
"url": "www.example.com",
"username": "Bob",
}
I am trying to load this with the generic GetAsync method into an object like:
RestClient restClient = new RestClient("https://api.somewebsite.com/pub");
var request = new RestRequest($"user/Bob");
var actUser = await restClient.GetAsync<User>(request)
This is working fine for all name/value pairs, but I cannot get RestSharp to initialize #id.
In my User class I have tried:
public string id { get; set; }
and
[JsonProperty("id")]
public string ID { get; set; }
and
[JsonProperty("#id")]
public string ID { get; set; }
but it is always null.
Is there a way to get the #id value?
try this, it works for me
using Newtonsoft.Json;
var restResponse = await restClient.ExecuteTaskAsync(request);
User user = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<User>( restResponse.Content);
public class User
{
[JsonProperty("#id")]
public string Id { get; set; }
public string url { get; set; }
public string username { get; set; }
}
I think GetAsync uses Text.Json so you can try
[JsonPropertyName("#id")]
public string Id { get; set; }
but IMHO ExecuteTaskAsync is more flexible since you can use any Newtonsoft.Json or System.Text.Json options.

How to deserialize json object with no parent class?

I'm trying and failing to write a program that will make an API call and then turn the returned items into objects that fit my model. Specifically I can't make it deserealize, and I suspect it has something to do with how the json is return compared to what my model looks like.
The data I'm trying to get looks like this;
https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod?start_date=2022-03-01&end_date=2022-03-08&api_key=DEMO_KEY
As you can see, it consists of an array of items, but there is no name for the array items. When I paste this into the Get-model with Paste JSON as Classes, I get this;
public class GetApodItemsResult
{
public Class1[] Property1 { get; set; }
}
public class Class1
{
public string copyright { get; set; }
public string date { get; set; }
public string explanation { get; set; }
public string hdurl { get; set; }
public string media_type { get; set; }
public string service_version { get; set; }
public string title { get; set; }
public string url { get; set; }
}
My entire code works just fine up until I need to serialize the JSON with this line:
var responseObject = await response.Content.ReadFromJsonAsync<GetApodItemsResult>();
, where I get this message;
System.Text.Json.JsonException: 'The JSON value could not be converted to UnnamedSpaceProject.Models.GetApodItemsResult.
Interestingly I know that the code works on a spotify api call, so the code really should work largely the same, which leads me to believe that the problem is with how the JSON is formatted.
How do I get around that? Because I don't see a way to have the root object contain an unnamed array.
Your GetApodItemsResult class is not a valid class to deserialize the content you get from server, the correct deserialization type will be List<Class1> or Class1[]
var responseObject = await response.Content.ReadFromJsonAsync<List<Class1>>();
I recommend you to use more meaningful name instead of Class1 you can name it Apod (acronym for Astronomy Picture of the Day)
Full working code:
using System.Text.Json;
using System.Text.Json.Serialization;
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
const string BaseUrl = #"https://api.nasa.gov/";
var response = await client.GetAsync($"{BaseUrl}planetary/apod?start_date=2022-03-01&end_date=2022-03-08&api_key=DEMO_KEY");
if ((response.StatusCode != System.Net.HttpStatusCode.OK))
{
Console.Error.WriteLine("field to fetch data from server");
}
var responseBody = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
var pictuersList = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<List<Apod>>(responseBody);
Console.WriteLine($"there is {pictuersList?.Count} apod downloaded successflly");
Console.WriteLine("done");
public class Apod
{
[JsonPropertyName("copyright")]
public string Copyright { get; set; } = "";
[JsonPropertyName("date")]
public string Date { get; set; } = "";
[JsonPropertyName("explanation")]
public string Explanation { get; set; } = "";
[JsonPropertyName("hdurl")]
public string Hdurl { get; set; } = "";
[JsonPropertyName("media_type")]
public string MediaType { get; set; } = "";
[JsonPropertyName("service_version")]
public string ServiceVersion { get; set; } = "";
[JsonPropertyName("title")]
public string Title { get; set; } = "";
[JsonPropertyName("url")]
public string Url { get; set; } = "";
}
The object your JSON containing is not some container with the array in it, it IS the array. So, the correct code would be like this:
var responseObject = await response.Content.ReadFromJsonAsync<Class1[]>();
The correct JSON for your code would look like this:
{
"Property1": [{
"copyright": "Jeff DaiTWAN",
"date": "2022-03-01",
"url": "https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/DuelingBands_Dai_960.jpg"
}]
}

JSON to object C# (mapping complex API response to C# object)

I am able to handle simple JSON serialization and deserialization but this API response seems little complicated, and I am seeking an advice as to what would be ideal approach to tackle this.
I'm trying to call an API for MVC application.
Goal is to map API data to model.
API endpoint is
https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_INTRADAY&symbol=MSFT&interval=1min&apikey=MyAPIKey
Troubles here are:
JSON data keys have white space in them.
When I tried doing paste special in Visual studio, It gave me a long
list of classes for each date entry separately, because this API
call returns a separate set of information for date.
To solve problem explained in point 1, I used [JsonProperty("1. Information")] in class. And in my code..
public async Task TSI()
{
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
//Uri uri = new Uri("http://date.jsontest.com/");
Uri uri = new Uri("https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_INTRADAY&symbol=MSFT&interval=5min&apikey=demo");
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync(uri);
if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
{
dynamic result = await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<object>();
IEnumerable<dynamic> dObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(result.ToString());
IEnumerable<dynamic> t1 = dObj.FirstOrDefault();
IEnumerable<dynamic> t2 = dObj.LastOrDefault();
dynamic MetaData = t1.FirstOrDefault();
Rootobject ro = new Rootobject();
ro.MetaData = MetaData;
}
PS: I'm relatively new to make API calls and handling them.
I was able to make a call to
date.jsontest.com
and map the API data to model (which I had created using paste special)
//API response
{
"time": "12:53:22 PM",
"milliseconds_since_epoch": 1504875202754,
"date": "09-08-2017"
}
//C# code to map to API data
public class sampleObject
{
public string time { get; set; }
public long milliseconds_since_epoch { get; set; }
public string date { get; set; }
}
My RootObject looks like this:
public class Rootobject
{
[JsonProperty("Meta Data")]
public MetaData MetaData { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("Time Series (1min)")]
public TimeSeries1Min TimeSeries1min { get; set; }
}
public class MetaData
{
[JsonProperty("1. Information")]
public string _1Information { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("2. Symbol")]
public string _2Symbol { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("3. Last Refreshed")]
public string _3LastRefreshed { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("4. Interval")]
public string _4Interval { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("5. Output Size")]
public string _5OutputSize { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("6. Time Zone")]
public string _6TimeZone { get; set; }
}
// I have so many of these sub-classes for dates, which again is an issue
public class TimeSeries1Min
{
public _20170907160000 _20170907160000 { get; set; }
public _20170907155900 _20170907155900 { get; set; }
....
....}
public class _20170907160000
{
public string _1open { get; set; }
public string _2high { get; set; }
public string _3low { get; set; }
public string _4close { get; set; }
public string _5volume { get; set; }
}
public class _20170907155900
{
public string _1open { get; set; }
public string _2high { get; set; }
public string _3low { get; set; }
public string _4close { get; set; }
public string _5volume { get; set; }
}
It is hard to create a model from this json, but you can convert those data to dictionary
var jObj = JObject.Parse(json);
var metadata = jObj["Meta Data"].ToObject<Dictionary<string, string>>();
var timeseries = jObj["Time Series (1min)"].ToObject<Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>>>();
The following code should do what you want
if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
{
var result = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
var obj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Rootobject>(result);
//No idea what you want to do with this line as there is no MetaData property on the root object
obj.MetaData = MetaData;
}

Deserialize nested JSON Response with RestSharp Client

I'd like to consume a REST Api and deserialize the nested JSON Response. For that purpose I tried to create some POCO classes which represent the JSON Response [1].
The response looks like this:
{
"success": true,
"message": "OK",
"types":
[
{
"name": "A5EF3-ASR",
"title": "ITIL Foundation Plus Cloud Introduction",
"classroomDeliveryMethod": "Self-paced Virtual Class",
"descriptions": {
"EN": {
"description": "some Text null",
"overview": null,
"abstract": "Some other text",
"prerequisits": null,
"objective": null,
"topic": null
}
},
"lastModified": "2014-10-08T08:37:43Z",
"created": "2014-04-28T11:23:12Z"
},
{
"name": "A4DT3-ASR",
"title": "ITIL Foundation eLearning Course + Exam",
"classroomDeliveryMethod": "Self-paced Virtual Class",
"descriptions": {
"EN": {
"description": "some Text"
(...)
So I created the following POCO classes:
public class Course
{
public bool success { get; set; }
public string Message { get; set; }
public List<CourseTypeContainer> Type { get; set; }
}
/* each Course has n CourseTypes */
public class CourseType
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public List<CourseTypeDescriptionContainer> Descriptions { get; set; }
public DateTime LastModified { get; set; }
public DateTime Created { get; set; }
}
public class CourseTypeContainer
{
public CourseType CourseType { get; set; }
}
/* each CourseType has n CourseTypeDescriptions */
public class CourseTypeDescription
{
public string Description { get; set; }
public string Overview { get; set; }
public string Abstract { get; set; }
public string Prerequisits { get; set; }
public string Objective { get; set; }
public string Topic { get; set; }
}
public class CourseTypeDescriptionContainer
{
public CourseTypeDescription CourseTypeDescription { get; set; }
}
And this is the API Code:
var client = new RestClient("https://www.someurl.com");
client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator("user", "password");
var request = new RestRequest();
request.Resource = "api/v1.0/types";
request.Method = Method.GET;
request.RequestFormat = DataFormat.Json;
var response = client.Execute<Course>(request);
EDIT 1: I found a Typo, the Type property in AvnetCourse should be named Types:
public List<AvnetCourseTypeContainer> Type { get; set; } // wrong
public List<AvnetCourseTypeContainer> Types { get; set; } // correct
Now the return values look like:
response.Data.success = true // CORRECT
repsonse.Data.Message = "OK" // CORRECT
response.Data.Types = (Count: 1234); // CORRECT
response.Data.Types[0].AvnetCourseType = null; // NOT CORRECT
EDIT 2: I implemented the Course.Types Property using a List<CourseType> instead of a List<CourseTypeContainer>, as proposed by Jaanus. The same goes for the CourseTypeDescriptionContainer:
public List<CourseTypeContainer> Type { get; set; } // OLD
public List<CourseTypeDescriptionContainer> Descriptions { get; set; } // OLD
public List<CourseType> Type { get; set; } // NEW
public List<CourseTypeDescription> Descriptions { get; set; } // NEW
Now the response.Data.Types finally are properly filled. However, the response.Data.Types.Descriptions are still not properly filled, since there is an additional language layer (e.g. "EN"). How can I solve this, without creating a PACO for each language?
EDIT 3: I had to add an additional CourseTypeDescriptionDetails class, where I would store the descriptive Data. In my CourseTypeDescription I added a property of the Type List for each language. Code Snippet:
public class AvnetCourseType
{
public List<CourseTypeDescription> Descriptions { get; set; }
// other properties
}
public class CourseTypeDescription
{
public List<CourseTypeDescriptionDetails> EN { get; set; } // English
public List<CourseTypeDescriptionDetails> NL { get; set; } // Dutch
}
public class CourseTypeDescriptionDetails
{
public string Description { get; set; }
public string Overview { get; set; }
public string Abstract { get; set; }
public string Prerequisits { get; set; }
public string Objective { get; set; }
public string Topic { get; set; }
}
It works now, but I need to add another property to CourseTypeDescription for each language.
OLD: The return values are
response.Data.success = true // CORRECT
repsonse.Data.Message = "OK" // CORRECT
response.Data.Type = null; // WHY?
So why does my response.Type equal null? What am I doing wrong?
Thank you
Resources:
[1] RestSharp Deserialization with JSON Array
Try using this as POCO:
public class Course
{
public bool success { get; set; }
public string message { get; set; }
public List<CourseTypeContainer> Types { get; set; }
}
Now you have list of CourseTypeContainer.
And CourseTypeContainer is
public class CourseTypeContainer
{
public CourseType CourseType { get; set; }
}
So when you are trying to get response.Data.Types[0].AvnetCourseType , then you need to have field AvnetCourseType inside CourseTypeContainer
Or I think what you want is actually this public List<CourseType> Types { get; set; }, you don't need a container there.
Just in case this helps someone else, I tried everything here and it still didn't work on the current version of RestSharp (106.6.2). RestSharp was completely ignoring the RootElement property as far as I could tell, even though it was at the top level. My workaround was to manually tell it to pull the nested JSON and then convert that. I used JSON.Net to accomplish this.
var response = restClient.Execute<T>(restRequest);
response.Content = JObject.Parse(response.Content)[restRequest.RootElement].ToString();
return new JsonDeserializer().Deserialize<T>(response);
I used http://json2csharp.com/ to create C# classes from JSON.
Then, renamed RootObject to the ClassName of the model file I'm creating
All the data in the nested json was accessible after RestSharp Deserializitaion similar to responseBody.data.Subject.Alias
where data, Subject and Alias are nested nodes inside the response JSON received.

Deserialize JSON with dynamic objects

I have a JSON object that comes with a long list of area codes. Unfortunately each area code is the object name on a list in the Data object. How do I create a class that will allow RestSharp to deserialize the content?
Here's how my class looks now:
public class phaxioResponse
{
public string success { get; set; }
public string message { get; set; }
public List<areaCode> data { get; set; }
public class areaCode
{
public string city { get; set; }
public string state { get; set; }
}
}
And here's the JSON content:
{
success: true
message: "277 area codes available."
data: {
201: {
city: "Bayonne, Jersey City, Union City"
state: "New Jersey"
}
202: {
city: "Washington"
state: "District Of Columbia"
} [...]
}
Since this JSON is not C# friendly, I had to do a little bit of hackery to make it come out properly. However, the result is quite nice.
var json = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(sampleJson);
var data = ((JObject)json.data).Children();
var stuff = data.Select(x => new { AreaCode = x.Path.Split('.')[1], City = x.First()["city"], State = x.Last()["state"] });
This code will generate an anonymous type that best represents the data. However, the anonymous type could be easily replaced by a ctor for a more normal DTO class.
The output looks something like this:
your json is incorrect, but if you do correct it you can use a json-to-csharp tool like the one on http://json2csharp.com/ to generate your classes:
public class __invalid_type__201
{
public string city { get; set; }
public string state { get; set; }
}
public class Data
{
public __invalid_type__201 __invalid_name__201 { get; set; }
}
public class RootObject
{
public bool success { get; set; }
public string message { get; set; }
public Data data { get; set; }
}
I don't know anything about RestSharp, but if you're using Newtonsoft on the server side, then you can just pass a JObject to your method. Then you can interrogate the object to see what type of object it really is and use JObject.ToObject() to convert it.
I think using Dictionary<int,areaCode> is the easiest way.
public class phaxioResponse
{
public string success { get; set; }
public string message { get; set; }
public Dictionary<int,areaCode> data { get; set; }
public class areaCode
{
public string city { get; set; }
public string state { get; set; }
}
}
Then:
var res= JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<phaxioResponse>(json);
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(",", res.data));

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