Gracefully handling an empty json object in RestSharp

Question

I have the following code:

public void GetJson()
{
    RestRequest request = new RestRequest(Method.GET);

    var data = Execute<Dictionary<string, MyObject>>(request);
}

public T Execute<T>(RestRequest request) where T : new()
{
    RestClient client = new RestClient(baseUrl);
    client.AddHandler("text/plain", new JsonDeserializer());

    var response = client.Execute<T>(request);

    return response.Data;
}

The problem is that sometimes the response will be an empty json array []. And when I run this code I get the following exception: Unable to cast object of type 'RestSharp.JsonArray' to type 'System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary`2[System.String,System.Object]'.

Is there a way to gracefully handle this?

Answer 1

I worked around a similar issue myself in the following way. I had tried using custom deserializers (since I was deserializing to a complex object) but in the end the following was much simpler, as it only applied to one of the many kinds of requests I was making.

request.OnBeforeDeserialization = (x =>
{
    x.Content = x.Content.Replace("[]", "{}");
});

Where I was constructing the request object for this particular request, I used the OnBeforeDeserialization property to set a callback which replaces the incorrect [] with {}. This works for me because I know the data I'm getting back in the rest of x.Content will never contain [] except in this specialized case, even in the values.

This might help someone else, but should definitely be used with care.