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C# getting MongoDB BsonDocument to return as JSON

I asked a question a couple of days ago to collect data from MongoDB as a tree.
MongoDB create an array within an array
I am a newbie to MongoDB, but have used JSON quite substantially. I thought using a MongoDB to store my JSON would be a great benefit, but I am just experiencing immense frustration.
I am using .NET 4.5.2
I have tried a number of ways to return the output from my aggregate query to my page.
public JsonResult GetFolders()
{
IMongoCollection<BsonDocument> collection = database.GetCollection<BsonDocument>("DataStore");
PipelineDefinition<BsonDocument, BsonDocument> treeDocs = new BsonDocument[]
{
// my query, which is a series of new BsonDocument
}
var documentGroup = collection.Aggregate(treeDocs).ToList();
// Here, I have tried to add it to a JsonResult Data,
// as both documentGroup alone and documentGroup.ToJson()
// Also, loop through and add it to a List and return as a JsonResult
// Also, attempted to serialise, and even change the JsonWriterSettings.
}
When I look in the Immediate Window at documentGroup, it looks exactly like Json, but when I send to browser, it is an escaped string, with \" surrounding all my keys and values.
I have attempted to create a model...
public class FolderTree
{
public string id { get; set; }
public string text { get; set; }
public List<FolderTree> children { get; set; }
}
then loop through the documentGroup
foreach(var docItem in documentGroup)
{
myDocs.Add(BsonSerializer.Deserialize<FolderTree>(docItem));
}
but Bson complains that it cannot convert int to string. (I have to have text and id as a string, as some of the items are strings)
How do I get my MongoDB data output as Json, and delivered to my browser as Json?
Thanks for your assistance.
========= EDIT ===========
I have attempted to follow this answer as suggested by Yong Shun below, https://stackoverflow.com/a/43220477/4541217 but this failed.
I had issues, that the "id" was not all the way through the tree, so I changed the folder tree to be...
public class FolderTree
{
//[BsonSerializer(typeof(FolderTreeObjectTypeSerializer))]
//public string id { get; set; }
[BsonSerializer(typeof(FolderTreeObjectTypeSerializer))]
public string text { get; set; }
public List<FolderTreeChildren> children { get; set; }
}
public class FolderTreeChildren
{
[BsonSerializer(typeof(FolderTreeObjectTypeSerializer))]
public string text { get; set; }
public List<FolderTreeChildren> children { get; set; }
}
Now, when I look at documentGroup, I see...
[0]: {Plugins.Models.FolderTree}
[1]: {Plugins.Models.FolderTree}
To be fair to sbc in the comments, I have made so many changes to get this to work, that I can't remember the code I had that generated it.
Because I could not send direct, my json result was handled as...
JsonResult json = new JsonResult();
json.Data = documentGroup;
//json.Data = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(documentGroup);
json.JsonRequestBehavior = JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet;
return json;
Note, that I also tried to send it as...
json.Data = documentGroup.ToJson();
json.Data = documentGroup.ToList();
json.Data = documentGroup.ToString();
all with varying failures.
If I leave as documentGroup, I get {Current: null, WasFirstBatchEmpty: false, PostBatchResumeToken: null}
If I do .ToJson(), I get "{ \"_t\" : \"AsyncCursor`1\" }"
If I do .ToList(), I get what looks like Json in json.Data, but get an error of Unable to cast object of type 'MongoDB.Bson.BsonInt32' to type 'MongoDB.Bson.BsonBoolean'.
If I do .ToString(), I get "MongoDB.Driver.Core.Operations.AsyncCursor`1[MongoDB.Bson.BsonDocument]"
=========== EDIT 2 =================
As this way of extracting the data from MongoDB doesn't want to work, how else can I make it work?
I am using C# MVC4. (.NET 4.5.2)
I need to deliver json to the browser, hence why I am using a JsonResult return type.
I need to use an aggregate to collect from MongoDB in the format I need it.
My Newtonsoft.Json version is 11.0.2
My MongoDB.Driver is version 2.11.1
My method is the simplest it can be.
What am I missing?

Windows Console Applications VS2105 C# - Using JSON Data

I have at times made it my life's work to avoid API's at all costs (that's a debate for another day) but the time is arriving for this to change, a few months ago I got started on creating an API for my applications, and thanks to this very website, it's worked a charm.
So now I'm creating a simple Windows Console Application, it should do nothing more than get API Data then submit to a database for the primary application to use at a later date.
So far so good or so I thought.
This is what I came up with:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string pair = "xxx/xxx";
string apiUrl = "http://someURL" + pair;
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(apiUrl);
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader readerStream = new StreamReader(responseStream, System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-8"));
string json = readerStream.ReadToEnd();
readerStream.Close();
var jo = JObject.Parse(json);
Console.WriteLine("Pair : " + (string)jo["pair"]);
Console.WriteLine("Open : " + (string)jo["openPrice"]);
Console.WriteLine("Close : " + (string)jo["closePrice"]);
Console.WriteLine("Vol : " + (string)jo["vol"]);
Console.ReadKey();
}
Now this works FANTASTIC for the primary source, but when I change the source (eventually it will be multi source) it fails to work.
After some investigation, it seems the slightly different responses are the culprit.
API Return looks like this
{
"ip":"1.1.1.1","country_code":"AU","country_name":"Australia",
"region_code":"VIC","region_name":"Victoria","city":"Research",
"zip_code":"3095","time_zone":"Australia/Melbourne","latitude":-37.7,
"longitude":145.1833,"metro_code":0
}
The return for an alternative source looks like this
{
"success":true,"message":"",
"result":[
{"MarketName":"BITCNY-BTC","High":8000.00000001,"Low":7000.00000000,
"Volume":0.02672075, "Last":7000.00000000,"BaseVolume":213.34995000,
"TimeStamp":"2017-02-09T08:38:22.62","Bid":7000.00000001,"Ask":9999.99999999,
"OpenBuyOrders":14,
"OpenSellOrders":20,"PrevDay":8000.00000001,"Created":"2015-12-11T06:31:40.653"
}
]
}
As we can see the second return is structured differently, and for this feed I've been unable to work this out, clearly my code works, kind of, and clearly it doesn't.
I've looked about on the net and am still no closer to a solution, partly I don't know what I'm really asking and secondly google only wants to talk webAPI.
If there is someone who can point me in the right direction, I don't want the work done for me per say that solves nothing, I have got to learn to do this one way or another.

As mentioned in the comments, your strings are unrelated. You won't be able to perform the same actions on both JSON strings because they're different.
Your best bet is to work with Deserialization to objects, which is converting a JSON string into an object and working with properties instead of JObject literals.
Putting your first JSON string into Json2Csharp.com, this class structure was produced:
public class RootObject
{
public string ip { get; set; }
public string country_code { get; set; }
public string country_name { get; set; }
public string region_code { get; set; }
public string region_name { get; set; }
public string city { get; set; }
public string zip_code { get; set; }
public string time_zone { get; set; }
public double latitude { get; set; }
public double longitude { get; set; }
public int metro_code { get; set; }
}
You could then make some adjustments to your code to extract the HTTP request functionality, assuming that you'll only be working with JSON strings in this instance, and then simply deserialized the JSON to an object.
An example of a WebRequest() method would be:
private static string WebRequest(string UrlToQuery)
{
using(WebClient client = new WebClient)
{
return client.DownloadString(UrlToQuery);
}
}
(Make sure you catch any errors and deal with unexpected responses, I'll leave that up to you!)
You can then call this method like so:
string JsonResponse = WebRequest(apiUrl);
and deserialize to an object of type RootObject like so:
RootObject deserializedString = JsonConvert.Deserialize<RootObject>(JsonResponse);
You'll then be able to perform something like:
Console.WriteLine($"Country name: {deserializedString.country_name}");
Which will print the value of the country_name property of your deserializedString object.

How to pass complex objects via SignalR?

There is an excellent tutorial on SignalR that explains how to pass .NET objects as parameters to Javascript and vice versa. In that case it passes a ChatMessage object to and from.
However, the tutorial addresses a really simple object. I'd like to see how to deal with complex .NET objects (that have other objects as properties) in Javascript.
For instance, consider the following object:
class Master {
public List<QuarterHour> QuarterHours { get; set; }
public List<string> Books { get; set; }
public int EndDay { get; set; }
public int StartDay { get; set; }
}
class QuarterHour {
public MinuteInstance Minute {get; set;}
public int HourStart { get; set;}
}
class MinuteInstance {
public bool Registered {get; set;}
public int NumAttendees {get; set;}
}
In .NET, I can reference a value like this: master.QuarterHours[2].Minute.Registered. My questions:
How would I do reference master.QuarterHours[2].Minute.Registered in the receiver method on the Javascript end?
How would I build the Master object in Javascript to be sent to the .NET end?

You just send it and reference it the same way.
You'd pass (this is how it looks when you get it from the server):
{
QuarterHours: [{
Minute: {
Registered: true,
NumAttendees: 1337
},
HourStart: 1
}],
Books: ["Game of Thrones", "Harry Potter"],
EndDay: 2,
StartDay: 3
}

You would want to serialize your class into a JSON object. There are many ways to accomplish this, but you can try JSON.NET to do it quick and easy.
If its not already included in your project, you can add this through Nuget with:
Install-Package Newtonsoft.Json
The code would look something like:
var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(master);
Once this is passed to your client-side, you can then read from your JSON object like any other. You can use the following javascript code to convert your SignalR string message to a JSON object:
var master = JSON.stringify(eval("(" + message + ")"));
var registered = master.QuarterHours[2].Minute.Registered;
You can also pass this through SignalR to the server and deserialize the JSON object using JsonConvert.DeserializeObject in order to convert it to your C# classes. Check out the documentation here for further details: http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json/help/

Convert json to a C# array?

Does anyone know how to convert a string which contains json into a C# array. I have this which reads the text/json from a webBrowser and stores it into a string.
string docText = webBrowser1.Document.Body.InnerText;
Just need to somehow change that json string into an array. Been looking at Json.NET but I'm not sure if that's what I need, as I don't want to change an array into json; but the other way around. Thanks for the help!

just take the string and use the JavaScriptSerializer to deserialize it into a native object. For example, having this json:
string json = "[{Name:'John Simith',Age:35},{Name:'Pablo Perez',Age:34}]";
You'd need to create a C# class called, for example, Person defined as so:
public class Person
{
public int Age {get;set;}
public string Name {get;set;}
}
You can now deserialize the JSON string into an array of Person by doing:
JavaScriptSerializer js = new JavaScriptSerializer();
Person [] persons = js.Deserialize<Person[]>(json);
Here's a link to JavaScriptSerializer documentation.
Note: my code above was not tested but that's the idea Tested it. Unless you are doing something "exotic", you should be fine using the JavascriptSerializer.

using Newtonsoft.Json;
Install this class in package console
This class works fine in all .NET Versions, for example in my project: I have DNX 4.5.1 and DNX CORE 5.0 and everything works.
Firstly before JSON deserialization, you need to declare a class to read normally and store some data somewhere
This is my class:
public class ToDoItem
{
public string text { get; set; }
public string complete { get; set; }
public string delete { get; set; }
public string username { get; set; }
public string user_password { get; set; }
public string eventID { get; set; }
}
In HttpContent section where you requesting data by GET request
for example:
HttpContent content = response.Content;
string mycontent = await content.ReadAsStringAsync();
//deserialization in items
ToDoItem[] items = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ToDoItem[]>(mycontent);

Yes, Json.Net is what you need. You basically want to deserialize a Json string into an array of objects.
See their examples:
string myJsonString = #"{
"Name": "Apple",
"Expiry": "\/Date(1230375600000+1300)\/",
"Price": 3.99,
"Sizes": [
"Small",
"Medium",
"Large"
]
}";
// Deserializes the string into a Product object
Product myProduct = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Product>(myJsonString);

Old question but worth adding an answer if using .NET Core 3.0 or later. JSON serialization/deserialization is built into the framework (System.Text.Json), so you don't have to use third party libraries any more. Here's an example based off the top answer given by #Icarus
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace ConsoleApp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var json = "[{\"Name\":\"John Smith\", \"Age\":35}, {\"Name\":\"Pablo Perez\", \"Age\":34}]";
// use the built in Json deserializer to convert the string to a list of Person objects
var people = System.Text.Json.JsonSerializer.Deserialize<List<Person>>(json);
foreach (var person in people)
{
Console.WriteLine(person.Name + " is " + person.Age + " years old.");
}
}
public class Person
{
public int Age { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
}
}

One Situation that wasn't covered in the other responses is when you don't know the type of what the JSON object contains. That was my case as I needed to be able to NOT type it and leave it dynamic.
var objectWithFields = js.Deserialize<dynamic[]>(json);
Note: it is definitely preferred to have a type, in some cases, it is not possible, that's why I added this answer.

How would I read into a 'nested' Json file with 'DataContractJsonSerializer' in C# .NET (win7 phone)?

I have an issue where if my json file looks like this
{ "Numbers": "45387", "Words": "space buckets"}
I can read it just fine, however if it looks like this:
{ "Main" :{ "Numbers": "45387", "Words": "space buckets"},
"Something" :{"Numbers": "12345", "Words": "Kransky"} }
I get no information back. I have no idea how to switch between Main and Something!
Loading a JSON with this 'nested' information using this code,
var ser = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(myInfo));
var info = (myInfo)ser.ReadObject(e.Result);
// The class being using to hold my information
[DataContract]
public class myInfo
{
[DataMember(Name="Numbers")]
public int number
{ get; set; }
[DataMember(Name="Words")]
public string words
{ get; set; }
}
Causes the class to come back empty.
I've tried adding the group name to DataContract eg. [DataContract, Name="Main"] but this still causes the classes values to be empty.
I've also tried adding "main" to the serializer overloader eg. var ser = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(myInfo), "Main");
This causes an error: Expecting element 'Main' from namespace ''.. Encountered 'Element' with name 'root', namespace ''.
I'd prefer to just use the supplied json reader. I have looked into json.NET but have found the documentation to be heavy on writing json and sparse with information about reading.
Surely I'm missing something simple here!

You could add a wrapper class:
[DataContract]
public class Wrapper
{
[DataMember]
public myInfo Main { get; set; }
[DataMember]
public myInfo Something { get; set; }
}
Now you could deserialize the JSON back to this wrapper class and use the two properties to access the values.