JSON Question
C# deserialize multiple JSON collections into a single List<T>
I fetch a collection of collections of the same object from a web api.
I would then like to deserialize the JSON into a single List
The JSON is as follows:
{
"Liverpool": [
{
"playerId": "LIV01",
"name": "Adam Llana",
"position": "Midfielder"
},
{
"playerId": "LIV02",
"name": "Daniel Sturridge",
"position": "Forward"
}
],
"ManchesterUnited": [
{
"playerId": "MNU01",
"name": "Daley Blind",
"position": "Defender"
},
{
"playerId": "MNU02",
"name": "Romelu Lukaku",
"position": "Forward"
}
],
"Arsenal": [
{
"playerId": "ARS01",
"name": "Petr Cech",
"position": "Goalkeeper"
},
{
"playerId": "ARS02",
"name": "Santi Cazorla",
"position": "Midfielder"
}
]
}
What I could like to be able to do is the following as I am not interested in the collection names:
public class Player
{
public string playerId { get; set; }
public string name { get; set; }
public string position { get; set; }
}
List<Player> cards = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<Player>>(jsonContent);
This does not work and produces an error.
Cannot deserialize the current JSON object (e.g. {\"name\":\"value\"})
into type 'System.Collections.Generic.List`1[Player]' because the type
requires a JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) to deserialize correctly. To fix
this error either change the JSON to a JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) or
change the deserialized type so that it is a normal .NET type (e.g.
not a primitive type like integer, not a collection type like an array
or List) that can be deserialized from a JSON object.
JsonObjectAttribute can also be added to the type to force it to
deserialize from a JSON object.
Is there any way to accomplish this using Newtonsoft.Json?
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Answer Source
Because of the variable team names you need to deserialize into Dictionary<string, List<Player>>. From there use SelectMany on the values of the dictionary to get the players
public class Player
{
public string playerId { get; set; }
public string name { get; set; }
public string position { get; set; }
}
var teams = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, List<Player>>>(jsonContent);
List<Player> players = teams.SelectMany(kvp => kvp.Value);
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