Benefits and drawbacks of generated C# classes for Json objects

Question

I have sample Json and I need to serialize it into C# objects. I decided to leverage for this purpose Json.Net library. Also I need to have C# classes which will represent this Json. To create classes could be used Json C# class generator. There we have two options. "Create properties" and generated classes will look like:

public class Address
{
    private JObject __jobject;
    public Address(JObject obj)
    {
        this.__jobject = obj;
    }
    public string street_address
    {
        get
        {
            return JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(__jobject, "street_address"));
        }
    }
    public string city
    {
        get
        {
            return JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(__jobject, "city"));
        }
    }
    public string state_province
    {
        get
        {
            return JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(__jobject, "state_province"));
        }
    }
    public string zip_postal_code
    {
        get
        {
            return JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(__jobject, "zip_postal_code"));
        }
    }
}

and another option is "Generate pre-populated read-only fields" and classes will look like

public class Address
{

    public Address(JObject obj)
    {
       this.street_address = JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(obj, "street_address"));
       this.city = JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(obj, "city"));
       this.state_province = JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(obj, "state_province"));
       this.zip_postal_code = JsonClassHelper.ReadString(JsonClassHelper.GetJToken<JValue>(obj, "zip_postal_code"));
    }

    public readonly string street_address;
    public readonly string city;
    public readonly string state_province;
    public readonly string zip_postal_code;
}

Both these generated classes rely on JObject and JsonClassHelper. But these classes could not be used with JsonSerializer like

var ro = jsonSerializer.Deserialize<RootObject>(reader);

We can create objects of these classes using JObject.Load method

var ro = new RootObject(Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject.Load(reader));

Another way is to use online json2csharp converter and classes will look like

public class Address
{
    public string street_address { get; set; }
    public string city { get; set; }
    public string state_province { get; set; }
    public string zip_postal_code { get; set; }
}

JsonSerializer could deal with this class.

My question is what classes generator is preferable to use and what are benefits and drawbacks of using each type of generated classes?
Thank you for your suggestions.

Answer 1

I assume you want to deserialize json string to c# object. I usually create C# object by myself, and use JsonConvert to deserialize json string.

class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
                string json = @"
                {
                        ""street_address"":""My street address"",
                        ""city"":""My City"",
                        ""state_province"":""My State Province"",
                        ""zip_postal_code"":""My Zip Postal Code"",
                }";

                Address address = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Address>(json);
                Console.WriteLine("Street address: {0}", address.StreetAddress);
                Console.WriteLine("City: {0}", address.City);
                Console.WriteLine("State province: {0}", address.StateProvince);
                Console.WriteLine("Zip postal code: {0}", address.ZipPostalCode);
        }
}

public class Address {
        [JsonProperty("street_address")]
        public string StreetAddress { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("city")]
        public string City { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("state_province")]
        public string StateProvince { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("zip_postal_code")]
        public string ZipPostalCode { get; set; }
}