Deserialize JSON with C#

Question

You need to create a structure like this:

public class Friends
{

    public List<FacebookFriend> data {get; set;}
}

public class FacebookFriend
{

    public string id {get; set;}
    public string name {get; set;}
}

Then you should be able to do:

Friends facebookFriends = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Friends>(result);

The names of my classes are just an example. You should use proper names.

Adding a sample test:

string json =
    @"{""data"":[{""id"":""518523721"",""name"":""ftyft""}, {""id"":""527032438"",""name"":""ftyftyf""}, {""id"":""527572047"",""name"":""ftgft""}, {""id"":""531141884"",""name"":""ftftft""}]}";

Friends facebookFriends = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Friends>(json);

foreach(var item in facebookFriends.data)
{
    Console.WriteLine("id: {0}, name: {1}", item.id, item.name);
}

Produces:

id: 518523721, name: ftyft
id: 527032438, name: ftyftyf
id: 527572047, name: ftgft
id: 531141884, name: ftftft

Sometimes I prefer dynamic objects:

public JsonResult GetJson()
{
  string res;
  WebClient client = new WebClient();

  // Download string
  string value = client.DownloadString("https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/000000000/media/recent/?client_id=clientId");

  // Write values
  res = value;
  dynamic dyn = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(res);
  var lstInstagramObjects = new List<InstagramModel>();

  foreach(var obj in dyn.data)
  {
    lstInstagramObjects.Add(new InstagramModel()
    {
      Link = (obj.link != null) ? obj.link.ToString() : "",
      VideoUrl = (obj.videos != null) ? obj.videos.standard_resolution.url.ToString() : "",
      CommentsCount = int.Parse(obj.comments.count.ToString()),
      LikesCount = int.Parse(obj.likes.count.ToString()),
      CreatedTime = new System.DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0).AddSeconds((double.Parse(obj.created_time.ToString()))),
      ImageUrl = (obj.images != null) ? obj.images.standard_resolution.url.ToString() : "",
      User = new InstagramModel.UserAccount()
             {
               username = obj.user.username,
               website = obj.user.website,
               profile_picture = obj.user.profile_picture,
               full_name = obj.user.full_name,
               bio = obj.user.bio,
               id = obj.user.id
             }
    });
  }

  return Json(lstInstagramObjects, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

A great way to automatically generate these classes for you is to copy your JSON output and throw it in here:

http://json2csharp.com/

It will provide you with a starting point to touch up your classes for deserialization.

Very easily we can parse JSON content with the help of dictionary and JavaScriptSerializer. Here is the sample code by which I parse JSON content from an ashx file.

var jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
string json = new StreamReader(context.Request.InputStream).ReadToEnd();
Dictionary<string, string> sData = jss.Deserialize<Dictionary<string, string>>(json);
string _Name = sData["Name"].ToString();
string _Subject = sData["Subject"].ToString();
string _Email = sData["Email"].ToString();
string _Details = sData["Details"].ToString();

Newtonsoft.JSON is a good solution for these kind of situations. Also Newtonsof.JSON is faster than others, such as JavaScriptSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer.

In this sample, you can the following:

var jsonData = JObject.Parse("your JSON data here");

Then you can cast jsonData to JArray, and you can use a for loop to get data at each iteration.

Also, I want to add something:

for (int i = 0; (JArray)jsonData["data"].Count; i++)
{
    var data = jsonData[i - 1];
}

Working with dynamic object and using Newtonsoft serialize is a good choice.