Deserialize nested, complex json object to just a string c#

Question

I have JSON which looks like:

{
  "name": "foo",
  "settings": {
    "setting1": true,
    "setting2": 1
  }
}  

I know how to use json2csharp.com to create the C# classes to deserialize this. They looks like:

public class Settings
{
    public bool settings1 { get; set; }
    public int settings2 { get; set; }
}

public class RootObject
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public Settings settings { get; set; }
}

but what I want is to simply deserialize it into

public class RootObject
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string settings { get; set; }
}

i.e., all of the "setting" JSON just needs to be saved as a string--the structure of that JSON is not consistent. How can that be done? Thanks!

Answer 1

You could use a JToken to capture your unknown settings during deserialization, then use a second property to allow you to access that JSON as a string if you need to.

Set up your class like this:

public class RootObject
{
    [JsonProperty("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [JsonIgnore]
    public string Settings
    {
        get { return SettingsToken != null ? SettingsToken.ToString(Formatting.None) : null; }
        set { SettingsToken = value != null ? JToken.Parse(value) : JValue.CreateNull(); }
    }

    [JsonProperty("settings")]
    private JToken SettingsToken { get; set; }
}

Then deserialize as usual:

var root = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(json);

The Settings property will contain the settings part of the JSON as a string. If you reserialize the object back to JSON then the settings will retain whatever structure it had before.

You can also change the Settings property to some other JSON string, as long as it is well-formed. (If it isn't, then an exception will be thrown immediately.)

Here is a round-trip demo: https://dotnetfiddle.net/thiaWk