Deserialising a dictionary of dictionaries into a Dictionary<string, object>-CodePudding

I have serialized a dictionary named state1 to json in C# with this code:

string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(state1, Formatting.Indented);

The value of this dictionary is another dictionary and when I deserialize the json file back to dictionary the values are not deserialised as dictionaries (I cannot cast the object back to a Dictionary<string, object>):

var values = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, object>>(json);

How can I deserialize the json correctly?

CodePudding user response：

If you want the original shape back, you need to use the original type when deserialising.

If, as it seems from your comment, that it's a dictionary of dictionaries of object, you'd need to use this when deserialising:

var values = JsonConvert
    .DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, object>>>(json);

If you need to treat this as a Dictionary<string, object> while still ensuring that the inner dictionary contents are deserialised as dictionaries (and not JObject), you can "cast" it in this way (as per this answer):

var values = JsonConvert
    .DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, object>>>(json)
    .ToDictionary(x => x.Key, x => (object)x.Value);