Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: ?. Path '', line 0, position 0 - c#

I have this JSON file:
[
{
"param1": "someURL",
"param2": "someURL2"
},
{
"param1": "someURL3",
"param2": "someURL4"
}
]
JsonLint says that this JSON is valid.
Now I read this JSON file from Azure Storage download it to a stream and then encode it:
string content = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());
Next I want to deserialize this to a list of objects:
List<MyParamObject> deserialized = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<MyParamObject>>(text);
MyParamObject is a POCO with two attributes named Param1 and Param2
When I try to deserialize it I get the following error:
Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: ?. Path '', line 0, position 0.
But I do give JsonConvert a string with a valid JSON what can I do?

Through a HEX Editor I checked the beginning of the file and I found out that my IDE added a BOM to the beginning of the file. So it looks like this:
[.. {.. "
As they are not recommended I chose to get rid of them by creating a new file with Explorer/Finder and adding my JSON in there.

Related

How to convert response data from rapidapi.com in c# objects

I have e response from https://rapidapi.com/ and I retrieve data like that in the web:
{1 item
"data":[1 item
0:{2 items
"screen_ID":"76"
"screen_data":{1 item
"icoData":{3 items
"data":[...
]3 items
"tabname":"ongoing"
"categories":[...
]13 items
}
}
}
]
}
When I try to convert from JSON to C# object from https://json2csharp.com/ I receive:
Exception: Invalid character after parsing property name. Expected ':' but got: i. Path '', line 1, position 3.
Is there a way to quick create objects with this data ?
I need the "data" content.
The error message said that the data you received is not a valid json format. It needs a colon after 1item.
{"1 item":{
.....
}
}
Recheck the renponse that you could get the correct json data.

How to parse a complicated nested JSON string in C#?

I have an ugly JSON string that is getting returned from an API that looks like this (this is the result of Console.Write on the string):
{"d":"\"\\\"\\\\\\\"[{\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"foo\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\":15,\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"bar\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\":null}]\\\\\\\"\\\"\\n\""}
I am trying to parse this into a C# object in the simplest way possible, so I can access properties like foo and bar. But I am having a difficult time doing this.
I have tried parsing it a number of ways, including:
// code to get the response string
client.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.ContentType, "application/json");
var serializedData = "{data: 'data'}";
var responseString = client.UploadString(url, "POST", serializedData);
// parse the response string
dynamic obj = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(jsonString);
This allows me to access the value of d, which is the actual string I need to parse. I then tried to parse that separately using JArray.Parse(obj["d"]), but I get an error saying that obj["d"] is not an array.
Unfortunately, I have no access to the API itself so can't modify how it's serializing the data it's returning.
Any suggestions?
You can replace all New Line, Backslash, Double quotes to format the JSON
var formattedJson = jsonString.Replace(#"\n", string.Empty)
.Replace(#"\", string.Empty)
.Replace("\"\"", string.Empty);
Console.WriteLine(formattedJson);
OUTPUT
{
"d": [
{
"foo": 15,
"bar": null
}
]
}
Convert to JArray.
var jArray = JArray.Parse(JObject.Parse(formattedJson)["d"].ToString());
Console.WriteLine($"{jArray[0]["foo"]} {jArray[0]["bar"]}");
OUTPUT
15
The problem is that the value of "d" is a string representing a string representing a string ... representing an array. You could call it JSON serialization "inception".
The way to deal with this is to deserialize the value corresponding number of times. If you're sure that the value is never going to be an actual string, you could do it like this, without having to know how many times the value was serialized:
var myObject = JObject.Parse(s);
var d = myObject["d"];
while(d.Type == JTokenType.String)
d = JToken.Parse(d.ToObject<string>());
myObject["d"] = d;
After this procedure myObject represents this data:
{
"d": [
{
"foo": 15,
"bar": null
}
]
}
Replacing escape characters in fine however I would not rely on the console.write command as the definitive output to examine. Here are a couple of other ways: -
Use Postman to make the API call so you can see the raw result. This will (hopefully) show it in an easy to read format that you can then define your class to deserialise to.
Write the raw response to a “.json” file. Open that file in a good editor (such as VS Code or VS itself) to see how the data is actually structured when it is received.
On a side note I would recommend using RestSharp to do the REST calls and Newtonsoft.Json to do the serialising/deserialising.

Deserializing JSON with Json.NET fails if internal string array exists

I am using Json.NET 6.x and I noticed weird behaviour:
If I want to deserialize this simple JSON, I get an error:
The code to deserialize:
object o = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(text);
and the JSON:
[
{
"Username": "tb386",
"TimestampUpdated": "2015-01-19T18:49:52.771571+01:00",
"AuthTokens": [
"Ua7JR5E7hSAxjafp6dpMrvw3HlICW3ZZdDuArMaU5ks="
]
}
]
The error I get is:
Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: U. Path '', line 0, position 0.
If I remove the array, it works fine. But all I have to do, is to remove the string inside the array, making it empty:
[
{
"Username": "tb386",
"TimestampUpdated": "2015-01-19T18:49:52.771571+01:00",
"AuthTokens": [ ]
}
]
and then it works fine. I should also note that the serialized JSON was produced by the Newtonsoft library, so the source is the same library!
If I try a validator (like http://jsonlint.com/) on the JSON with the array, it valides OK!
Can anyone help me out here?
Additional information: Even if I add a string inside VS and write the JSON hardcoded, it fails!
string text = "[ {\"Username\": \"tb386\",\"TimestampUpdated\": \"2015-01-19T18:49:52.771571+01:00\",\"AuthTokens\": [\"Ua7JR5E7hSAxjafp6dpMrvw3HlICW3ZZdDuArMaU5ks=\"] } ]";
object o = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(text);
Version info on Newtonsoft dll:

JSON.Net deserialize string which contains special characters

How do I parse JSON string with one of the values containing special characters?
JObject obj = JObject.Parse(str);
str value:
{
"message": "some !##$%^&*(){}:"?/?/|"':>;><{"d":"v"}"
}
I have got execption: After parsing a value an unexpected character was encountered: {.
That JSON is invalid. If a JSON string contains special characters like double quotes ", backslashes \ or slashes /, they need to be escaped with backslashes \. (See JSON.org.) No JSON parser, including Json.Net, will be able to deal with a JSON string that isn't properly formatted in the first place.
Your JSON would need to look like this to be able to be parsed correctly:
{
"message": "some !##$%^&*(){}:\"?/?/|\"':>;><{\"d\":\"v\"}"
}
The solution is to correctly serialize the string at the source.
Take your JSON and .stringify() it.
{
"message": JSON.stringify("your text here")
}
If you have raw data in your ASP.NET MVC view, you can follow this way:
{
"message": JSON.stringify("#Html.Raw(HttpUtility.JavaScriptStringEncode(Model.MyString))")
}
You can also try more preferred way:
JSON.stringify({ "message" : message });

JSON parse exception using System.Json

I get an error while parsing a json string into an object. I am using system.json to parse the json string.
The JSON file: (NOTE: I cannot change the structure of this json file because it is generated)
{
title: "My Title",
log: "",
nid: "1234",
type: "software",
language: "EN",
created: "1364480345",
revision_timestamp: "1366803957",
body: {
und: [
{
value: "abc",
summary: "def"
}
]
}
}
The C# code:
string jsonString = new WebClient().DownloadString(".......MyJson.json"); //For test purpose
var obj = JsonObject.Parse (jsonString); ///<--- At this line the exception is thrown
The Exception:
System.ArgumentException has been thrown.
Invalid JSON string literal format. At line 1, column 2
How to solve this?
Thanks in advance!
You can't. That isn't valid json. Field names must be enclosed in quotes. All json parsing tools will throw when trying to parse that.
You could process it and turn it to valid json before deserializing, but really, you need to correct it API side. No clients will work with that.
How to solve this?
(NOTE: I cannot change the structure of this json file because it is generated)
Easy, use json.Net. it works without any problem with your json
var j = JObject.Parse(jsonString);
You can even use dynamic keyword
dynamic j = JObject.Parse(jsonString);
Console.WriteLine("{0},{1}", j.title, j.body.und[0].value);

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