C# Manipulating JSON with generic object

Question

I have JSON that mostly looks like the following:

{
   "odata.metadata":"XXX",
   "value":[
      {
         "PartitionKey":"0000000001-0000000001",
         "RowKey":"8a6f7335-4cc7-4aaa-9b48-f719a1f56844",
         "Timestamp":"2016-11-07T18:19:59.3147580Z",
         "DistributionNumber":1,
         "Name":"General"
      },
      {
         "PartitionKey":"0000000001-0000000001",
         "Id":"bce10165-3a3e-4166-9907-2ed02c0f83fb",
         "Timestamp":"2016-11-07T18:20:17.1260274Z",
         "DistributionNumber":1,
         "Designation":"Secondary"
      }
  ]
}

I say "mostly" because the JSON can vary except for the following:

• There will always be a odata.metadata node off the root.
• There will always be a value node off the root which will be an array.
• The value array can have a varied number of items, each with a variety of name-value pairs except one will always be PartitionKey.

What I need to do is read the JSON into memory and strip out all the value items which do not have a PartitionKey = "0000000001-0000000001".

I have the following code so far:

var jsonObj = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Dictionary<string, object>>(jsonString);
var value = (ArrayList)jsonObj["value"];
foreach (var item in value)
{
    if (item["PartitionKey"] != "0000000001-0000000001")
    {
        value.Remove(item.Key);
    }
}

Casting the value as an ArrayList seems to be the only way I'm able to access its data, but then I have trouble accessing the PartitionKey property.

How can I do what I want - test each item in value and conditionally remove them - in a generic fashion since the data in each value item can be different?

Answer 1

I think the easiest way is to use a Dictionary<string, string> for the value properties. For example:

public class DataObject
{
    [JsonProperty("odata.metadata")]
    public string ODataMetadata { get; set; }

    public IEnumerable<Dictionary<string, string>> Value { get; set; }
}

Now using JSON.Net:

var data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DataObject>(json);

And then filter out the values you don't want:

data.Value = data.Value
    .Where(v => v.Any(kvp => 
        kvp.Key == "PartitionKey" && kvp.Value == "0000000001-0000000001"));