using newtonsoft, how to deserialize without knowing the type till run time?

Question

so the followwing works just fine, giving me a Team object from the string json:

var found = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Team>(json);

but what if I won't know the type until runtime? Say I've got the string json as above, but I also have another string with the type name? for example, this isn't working:

var found = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(json, Type.GetType("Team"));

Unable to cast object of type 'Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray' to type ...

Answer 1

This worked for me:

var type = Type.GetType("My.Namespace.Class");
var myObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(item, type);

The trick is to make sure that type is not null by providing the correct class name. If it is, the Deserialization can still work, but the output won't be the type you are wanting. See MSDN for more info on GetType.