problem deserializing object using newtonsoft-CodePudding

I hope someone can help me. This is code I use to retrieve a bunch of data about a particular device with an api (in this case, a Twinkly light string). Here's my code, which is partially functional.

            HttpResponseMessage result = await httpClient.GetAsync(uri);
        string response = await result.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
        JObject jObject = JObject.Parse(response);
        Layout layout = new Layout();
        layout = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Layout>(response);

I say it's "partially" functional because every property that is in the root level deserializes into the model just fine, but the json also returns a property called "coordinates" which consists of an array entry for each bulb, and each entry has three values for x,y,z.
I have tried a lot of stuff to get the data from the coordinates array and i can break-mode view that the data is in there.

However it doesn't deserialize properly. I have the correct number of elements in the coordinates array, but they are all x:0, y:0, z:0

Here is my model schema. I hope someone can help me with this. This is my first foray into api work, and the first time i've had a nested model like this.

 internal class Layout
{ 
    public int aspectXY { get; set; }
    public int aspectXZ { get; set; }
    public LedPosition[] coordinates { get; set; } 
    public string source { get; set; } //linear, 2d, 3d
    public bool synthesized { get; set; }
    public string uuid { get; set; }
}

internal class LedPosition
{
    double x { get; set; }    
    double y { get; set; }
    double z { get; set; }
}

Note: I've tried assigning the properties manually like this:

JToken dataToken = jObject.GetValue("coordinates");

and that indeed received the data but it didn't help me as it merely moved the issue.

CodePudding user response：

One thing I've learned recently from the big dog CTO at my work was you can actually copy the JSON you're expecting, and go to Edit -> Paste Special -> Paste JSON as Classes in Visual Studio and it'll paste it as the classes you need, with the proper names/properties. Really slick. Maybe try that and see if it comes out with a different model than what you have now.

CodePudding user response：

you don' t need parse and deserialized in the same time, it would be enough

 var response = await result.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
 var layout = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Layout>(response);

to make LedPosition properties visible make them public too

public class LedPosition
{
   public  double x { get; set; }    
   public double y { get; set; }
   public double z { get; set; }
}

since it is used by another class this class should be public too

public class Layout

CodePudding user response：

This is my first foray into api work

Two things I want to point out, then..

does the api you're using publish a swagger/open api document?
- No - see 2 below
- Yes - take a look at tools like NSwag(Studio), Autorest and others. You feed the swagger.json into them and they crank out a few thousand lines of code that creates a client that does all the http calling, deserializing, the classes of data etc. if means your code would end up looking like:

    var client = new TwinklyLightClient();
    var spec = client.GetTwinklyLightSpec();
    foreach(var coord in spec.Coords)
      Console.Write(spec.X);

This is how APIs are supposed to be; the tools that create them operate to rules, the tools that describe them operate to rules so the consumption of them can be done by tools operating to rules - writing boilerplate json and http request bodies is a job for a computer because it's repetitive and always follows the same pattern

The API doesn't publish a spec we can use to get the computer to write the boring bits for us. Durn. Well, you can either make the spec yourself (not so hard) or go slightly more manual
- Take your json (view it raw and copy it)
- Go to any one of a number of websites that turn json into code - I like http://QuickType.io because it does a lot of languages, has a lot of customization and gives advanced examples of custom type deser, but there are others - and paste that json in
- Instantly it's transformed into eg C# and can be pasted into your project
- It gives an example of how to use it in the comments - a one liner something like:

    var json = httpCallHereTo.GetTheResponseAsJsonString();
    var twinklyLightSpec = TwinklyLightSpec.FromJson(json);

Yes, visual studio can make classes from json, but it's not very sophisticated - it does the job, but these sites that make json to c# go further in allowing you to choose arrays or lists, what the root object is called, decorating every property with a JsonProperty attribute that specifies the json name and keeps the c# property to c# naming conventions (or allows you to rename it to suit you)..

..and they work out of the box, which would resolve this problem you're having right now