Deserializing JSON Nested Dictionaries-CodePudding

My JSON message has a combination of a string, list and a nested dictionary, as seen below.

message = {
        "series":"A",
        "series_color": ["red","blue","green"],
        "parts":{"part1":{"id-01":"contextA", "id-02":"contextB", "id-03":"contextC"},"part2":{"id-01":"contextA", "id-02":"contextB", "id-03":"contextC"}}
          }

This is received in a C# script in Unity where I deserialize this by using:

// Translates Byte into String
var Message = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetString(e.Message);

// Translates String into Object and stores in Dictionary
Dictionary<string, object> MessageDICT = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, object>>(Message);

From here I can print out the first two messages series and series_color.

// Series
object series= MessageDICT["series"];
print(series);

// Series Color
object series_color = (JArray)MessageDICT["series_color"])[0]
print(series_color)

The problem comes where I try to unpack the contents of the nested dictionary parts, as I can't unpack it due to its unexpected values such as "{".

I know there are manual methods of trying to replace "{" with "[" and using it as an array, as well as creating a class to read the JSON (shows errors regarding Unity main thread) however these are not the solution I am looking for.

Are there are any ways to unpack all of this? Thanks in advanced.

CodePudding user response：

you don't need to deserialize json, you can access to "parts" using parsing

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

Dictionary<string,object> parts= ((JObject)MessageDICT["parts"]).Properties()
.SelectMany(i => new Dictionary<string, object> { {i.Name,i.Value} })
.ToDictionary(i => i.Key, i=>i.Value );

var part1Id01 = ((JObject) parts["part1"])["id-01"] ; // contextA

CodePudding user response：

In this case, I would recommend using a strongly typed class and System.Text.Json (or the serialization library of your choosing) to deserialize your object. You could create classes like the following:

public class MyClass
{
    [JsonPropertyName("series")]
    public string Series { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("series_color")]
    public List<string> SeriesColor { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("parts")]
    public Dictionary<string, PartsClass> Parts { get; set; }
}

public class PartsClass 
{
    [JsonPropertyName("id-01")]
    public string Id1 { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("id-02")]
    public string Id2 { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("id-03")]
    public string Id3 { get; set; }
}

And then you can use the serializer like this:

var serialized = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<MyClass>(message);

If the "PartsClass" is dynamic (I.E. you never know how many ids you might have) then you could make that another Dictionary<string, string>