Parsing nested JSON objects with JSON.NET

Question

My JSON feed has nested objects like this:

{
"id": 1765116,
"name": "StrozeR",
"birth": "2009-08-12",
"avatar": "http:\/\/static.erepublik.com\/uploads\/avatars\/Citizens\/2009\/08\/12\/f19db99e9baddad73981d214a6e576ef_100x100.jpg",
"online": true,
"alive": true,
"ban": null,
"level": 61,
"experience": 183920,
"strength": 25779.42,
"rank": {
    "points": 133687587,
    "level": 63,
    "image": "http:\/\/www.erepublik.com\/images\/modules\/ranks\/god_of_war_1.png",
    "name": "God of War*"
},
"elite_citizen": false,
"national_rank": 6,
"residence": {
    "country": {
        "id": 81,
        "name": "Republic of China (Taiwan)",
        "code": "TW"
    },
    "region": {
        "id": 484,
        "name": "Hokkaido"
    }
}
}

and my object classes are like this:

class Citizen
{
    public class Rank
    {
        public int points { get; set; }
        public int level { get; set; }
        public string image { get; set; }
        public string name { get; set; }
    }
    public class RootObject
    {
        public int id { get; set; }
        public string name { get; set; }
        public string avatar { get; set; }
        public bool online { get; set; }
        public bool alive { get; set; }
        public string ban { get; set; }
        public string birth { get; set; }
        public int level { get; set; }
        public int experience { get; set; }
        public double strength { get; set; }
        public List<Rank> rank { get; set; }

    }
}

I try to parse my JSON data with following code

private async void getJSON()
{
    var http = new HttpClient();
    http.MaxResponseContentBufferSize = Int32.MaxValue;
    var response = await http.GetStringAsync(uri);

    var rootObject = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Citizen.RootObject>(response);
    uriTB.Text = rootObject.name;
    responseDebug.Text = response;
}

but I get the following error:

Cannot deserialize the current JSON object (e.g. {"name":"value"}) into type 'System.Collections.Generic.List`1[Erepublik.Citizen+Rank]' because the type requires a JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) to deserialize correctly.

I can't even parse the value in the main object. Anyway to fix this? and how can I parse a value inside of a nested object? for example: "points" in "rank"

Answer 1

Like the error message says, your rank property in the .NET class is a List<Rank>, but in your JSON it's just a nested object, not an array. Change it to just a Rank instead of a List<Rank>.

Arrays in JSON (or any Javascript, really) are enclosed in []. The {} characters specify a single object. The CLR type has to roughly match the JSON type in order to deserialize. Object to object, array to array.