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How to get a nested object from an json parent array in c#

In a C# Controller.cs how do I get a "child" or "nested" object from a "parent" object. I am currently able to retrieve the values for objects that are NOT nested, but I also need to be able to grab the values to certain child objects as well.
Please see my currently working code below that actually retrieves the data when the object is NOT nested. I am able to get the values invoiceNumber, email, and paymentMethod .
using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(httpResponse.GetResponseStream()))
{
var result = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
var obj = JObject.Parse(result);
string invoiceNumber = (string)obj["invoiceNumber"];
string email = (string)obj["email"];
string paymentMethod = (string)obj["paymentMethod"];
}
Now when I attempt to get the data for objects that are nested, I just get retuned NULL. These values are NOT actually null as when I am debugging in visual studio JSON Visualizer, they have values but I just do not know how to write the syntax I need in order to grab these that are "child" or "nested" objects. So as you can see in the code below I tried to call this value for amountSaved in every way that I could think of, but it just returns NULL each time.
string rate = (string)obj["discounts.[0].amountSaved"];
string rate2 = (string)obj["discounts.amountSaved"];
string rate3 = (string)obj["discounts amountSaved"];
string rate4 = (string)obj["discounts:amountSaved"];
string rate5 = (string)obj["{discounts}:amountSaved"];
string rate6 = (string)obj["{discounts}.amountSaved"];
string rate7 = (string)obj["discounts.{amountSaved}"];
string rate8 = (string)obj["{discounts.amountSaved}"];
I figured the solution might be something like I call the parent object first which in this case is called discounts and then after a period or colon or space(. :) or something, I enter the name of the child object which in this case is amountSaved. That did not work.
Please see my screenshot below. This is when I debugging in visual studio and use the JSON Visualizer. You can see what I mean by discounts being a parent object with child values such as amountSaved. You can also see that it has a value of 0.75. You can can also see what I mean by the other values that are not nested which I am able to grab like shippingMethod.
How can I accomplish this?
Thank you.

when you use the square brakets you should not put . between them. And you can omit square brakets and use dot syntax only if you have deserialized object, not just parsed it
string rate = (string)obj["discounts"][0]["amountSaved"];

NancyFx DynamicDictionary

I am trying to understand the DynamicDictionary in NancyFX, it looks pretty cool. Does anyone know of a blog post or similar, that goes through the internals of it?
I need a propertybag to pass around objects, that I don't know the content of because they come from outside my system as JSON. But based on the contents of these objects, such as the presence of certain properties I need to do stuff.
I could just pass around dynamic objects, but that is a bit too vague I think. Don't really like that.
I would need nested dictionaries, to fully represent the object graph.

The dynamic dictionary is just a ExpandoObject with a Dictionary in it. So it can still be accessed like a dictionary.
For example, in MVC you access Form properties like so:
var name = Request["name"];
or
var name = Request.Form["name"];
When a request comes into Nancy you can access it via the dot notation. Or via the class indexer.
var name = parameters.name;
var name = parameters["name"];
This is handy when you're sending query string or form names that have values that cannot be used in dot notation.
var firstName = parameters["first-name"];
The values are also dynamic, so it could be made up of nested objects. This allows you to do stuff like:
var firstName = parameters.contact.firstname;
So if you're passing a JSON payload to the request then you can access the entire structure using dot notation.
However you will probably find most developers using Nancy only ever access Route values or QueryString values using this method.
Get["/products/{id:int}/"] = parameters => {
int id = parameters.id;
};
So back to the original question:
Is there a blog post or any doco: Nope.
Why does it exist: For sugar syntax.
Can I use it for what I want: Yes absolutely!
Can you tell me how to use it: Nope, however it shouldn't be hard. Just look the model binding in Nancy to figure it out. It's not too hard.
Just an edit based on the answer by the OP.
When you access the dot notation, continued dot notation will only work on further dynamic types.
This means using var will cause an exception because of the way var and dynamic are handled by the compiler.
When you do:
var person = parameters.person;
var name = person.name;
parameters is currently dynamic and implements TryGetMember, this internally looks up a dictionary of values and attempts to return the value.
When you define the object as var for the person variable. The compiler assumes that anything after that exists on the object, so it looks for name on the person variable.
Since name does not exist as a member of person it will throw.
To resolve this, the variable must be assigned as dynamic. So the example becomes:
dynamic person = parameters.person;
var name = person.name;
This will work.

So I started working with the DynamicDictionary and it is pretty cool and easy to work with. Only one thing bugs me right now. That is if I nest DynamicDictionaries.
Look at the following example:
private void TestNestedDynamicDictionary()
{
dynamic dictionary = new DynamicDictionary();
dynamic nestedDictionary = new DynamicDictionary();
nestedDictionary.Add("name", "Peter");
dictionary.Add("person", nestedDictionary);
var person = dictionary.person;
var name = person.name;
Console.WriteLine(name);
}
This fails when trying to access person.name with a 'Microsoft.CSharp.RuntimeBinder.RuntimeBinderException:
DynamicDictionaryValue' does not contain a definition for 'name'
If I just do an explicit cast like this it works.
var person = (DynamicDictionary)dictionary.person;
Any input on how I could make it behave as DynamicDictionary right out of the box... apart from checking the DynamicDictionaryValue before it is returned, and do the cast there, which I think is messy.
public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result)
{
object value;
if (!dictionary.TryGetValue(binder.Name, out value))
{
result = new DynamicDictionaryValue(null);
return true;
}
var dictVal = value as DynamicDictionaryValue;
if (null != dictVal && dictVal.Value is DynamicDictionary)
{
result = dictVal.Value;
}
else
{
result = value;
}
return true;
}

How to create a json string where a property contains a dot (period)?

I'm trying to send an HttpRequest that takes a JSON object like this:
{
"some.setting.withperiods":"myvalue"
}
I've been creating anonymous objects for my other requests, but I can't do that with this one since the name contains a dot.
I know I can create a class and specify the [DataMember(Name="some.setting.withperiods")] attribute, but there must be a more lightweight solution.

There is no "easy" way to achieve this because the . in C# is reserved.
However, you could achieve something pretty close by using a dictionary and collection initializer. It's still somewhat isolated, and doesn't require you to create a custom class.
var obj = new Dictionary<string, object>
{
{ "some.setting.withperiods", "myvalue" }
};
var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(obj);
//{"some.setting.withperiods":"myvalue"}

You can use "JsonProperty" attribute for the same For example
[JsonProperty(".Name")]
public string Name { get; set; }

On top of this I want to add how to retrieve the data from the json where it has name property starting with special character as in Web API 2.0 token has ".issued".
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq;
var jsonRespons="json response from the web api";
var issue= JObject.Parse(jsonResponse).GetValue(".issued");

if you do it from in javascript, you can easily go back and forth, as shown with:
var obj = {
"some.setting.withdots":"myvalue"
};
var json = JSON.stringify(obj);
console.log(json);
var str = JSON.parse(json);
console.log(str);
have you tried putting it into a serialized string and sending that, then deserializing on the client-side?
you could do something like
var myAnnon = new
{
WithPeriod = "value"
};
var j = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(myAnnon);
j = j.Replace("WithPeriod", "some.setting.withdots");

You can use a JObject (part of Json.Net's LINQ-to-JSON API) to create the JSON in question:
string json = new JObject(new JProperty("some.setting.withperiods", "myvalue")).ToString();
Fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/bhgTta

You could try prefixing your member names with a # to allow use of literals, but the way to do it is using [DataMember] as you have already mentioned in your question.

c# Json.net deserializing List<Dictionary<string,object>>

What is the proper way to deserialize this JSON string? It is simply an array of dictionaries where each dict has a "title" and "children" where children is another array of dicts.
I am using this as a TreeView item source, but the treeview only displays the Title1 > Child1 because I assume something is wrong with the deserializing I'm doing. I also try to print out Child1's first child but can't figure out how to do it. The code below has an invalid cast exception.
s = #"[{""title"":""Title1"",""children"":[{""title"":""Child1"",""children"":[{""title"":""grandchild1"",""children"":[{""title"":""Huh""}]}] }] }]";
List<Dictionary<string, object>> marr = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<Dictionary<string, object>>>(s);
mTreeView.ItemsSource = marr;
List<Dictionary<string,object>> cs = (List<Dictionary<string,object>>)marr[0]["children"];
Debug.WriteLine(cs[0]["title"]);

Looks to me like you have the following:
class MyObject
{
public string title { get; set; }
public List<MyObject> children { get; set; }
}
var deserialized = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<MyObject>>(s);
And no, there's no dictionary here, because:
Try as I might, I don't see a "dictionary" here so much as a recursive list of the object above, and
This is the actual definition of the object your want out anyway, so you can take advantage of all the benefits of having a real type, rather than just a dictionary of strings.
Note to address your comments: If the JSON string changes, it will not break your code; extraneous properties will be ignored and missing properties will correctly get set to null.

https://codetitans.codeplex.com/
codetitans JSON supports correct parsing of JSON into array/dict of primitives as follows:
JSonReader jr = new JSonReader();
IJSonObject json = jr.ReadAsJSonObject(s);
Debug.WriteLine(json[0]["children"][0]["title"]);
As far as I can tell it is the only C# library that does.

It looks like you can do this with JSON.NET out of box currently
var #object = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(s)
var slightlyMoreUsefulObject = (JArray)#object;
var actualObject = slightlyMoreUsefulObject[0]
var topLevelTitle = actualObject["title"]
var children = actualObject["children"]
var firstChild = children[0]
var firstChildTitle = firstChild["title"]

JavaScriptSerializer: Serialize a list + a string into JSON

I want to use JavaScriptSerializer to send a package of JSON data that contains both a list of objects as well as a string, identified like ChatLogPath. As far as I can tell, that class can only serialize one object -- being the list -- and if I try to append multiple ones it obviously just creates invalid JSON like {...}{...} which won't work.
Is there any way to do this? I'm insanely new to C# and ASP.NET MVC so forgive me if this is a dumb question :)
Edit: here's my code as of right now.
string chatLogPath = "path_to_a_text_file.txt";
IEnumerable<ChatMessage> q = ...
...
JavaScriptSerializer json = new JavaScriptSerializer();
return json.Serialize(q) + json.Serialize(chatLogPath);
Which will output the array like this in JSON { ... } followed by the chatLogPath { ... }. In other words, it can't work since that's invalid JSON.

The easiest way to get a single JSON object with the array and path together is to create a class or dynamic object with each as a property/field of it.
Class example:
public class ChatInformation {
public IEnumerable<ChatMessage> messages;
public string chatLogPath;
}
...
var output = new ChatInformation {
messages = ...,
chatLogPath = "path_to_a_text_file.txt"
};
return json.Serialize(output);
Dynamic example (requires .NET 4+):
dynamic output = new ExpandoObject {
messages = ...,
chatLogPath = "path_to_a_text_file.txt"
};
return json.Serialize(output);
Anonymous Type example (if you don't care to have another class, nor are you on .NET 4):
var output = new {
messages = ...,
chatLogPath = "path_to_a_text_file.txt"
};
return json.Serialize(output);