Access JSON item with variable key name

Question

The following is my JSON data which happens to be the format supplied by Wikidata, although greatly trimmed down for clarity.

{
"entities": {
    "Q200405": {
        "id": "Q200405",
        "type": "item",
        "claims": "Cheese"
        }
    }
}

I am attempting to access this data within c#. My problem is that the Q200405 is dynamic - it is basically the record number that I am retrieving. For example, another page might give me

{
"entities": {
    "Q123456": {
        "id": "Q123456",
        "type": "item",
        "claims": "Lemon"
        }
    }
}

My best attempt so far was using Json.NET (Newtonsoft) ;

json = "{\"entities\":{\"Q200405\" {\"id\":\"Q200405\",\"type\":\"item\",\"claims\":\"Cheese\"}}}";

var Query = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(json);
string entities = Query.entities.ToString();

Query = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(entities);
string entity = Query.Q200405.ToString();

Query = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(entity);
string id = Query.id.ToString();
string claims = Query.claims.ToString();

This works, but obviously hardcoding Query.Q200405.ToString() is not the ideal solution! I probably should not be doing multiple Deserialize statements to drill down into the data either?

My question is what is the best way to read the above JSON format into a c# program?

Answer 1

Well if you want to put the names into string variables, just use JObject:

string id = "Q200405"; // Or wherever you get that from
string text = "{\"entities...";
var json = JObject.Parse(text);

var claim = json["entities"][id];

string claims = (string) claim["claims"];
string type = (string) claim["type"];
// etc

Basically LINQ to JSON is really what you want here.

EDIT: If you don't know the ID beforehand, you can use:

var json = JObject.Parse(text);
var entities = (JObject) json["entities"];
var entity = entities.Properties().First();
var id = entity.Name;
var claim = (JObject) entity.Value;
string claims = (string) claim["claims"];
string type = (string) claim["type"];
Console.WriteLine(new { claims, type, id });