Parsing Json with nested and variable dictionaries using Newtonsoft [duplicate]

Question

I have a Json that looks as this:

{
    "id": "1367",
    "title": "ticket sample",
    "custom_fields": {
        "13084": {
            "E0D4ED43": "South"
        },
        "13085": {
            "F19DF0D6": "Atlanta"
        },
        "13089": {
            "AF0EC62F": "Peter Johnson"
        }
    }
}

And to parse it, my class uses nested Dictionaries:

class incident
    {
        public string id { get; set; }
        public string title { get; set; }
        public Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, string>> custom_fields { get; set; }
    }

This works like a charme, until I've discovered that the custom fields are not always the same, for example I could receive:

{
    "id": "1367",
    "title": "ticket sample",
    "custom_fields": {
        "13084": {
            "E0D4ED43": "South"
        },
        "13085": {
            "F19DF0D6": "Atlanta"
        },
        "13086": "SAP",
        "13088": {
            "AE3ED01A": "Commercial"
        }
    }
}

If you look at the custom field "13086", it doesn't contains another object (it's just a string), so when I try to parse with the previous class it fails.

Those are examples of two different responses, but the keys received change a lot (that's why I used Dictionaries because I don't know how many and which will be received for each ticket)

You're going to need to use a custom converter. Do you know that the custom field values are always strings or dictionaries of strings, or could they be anything? — dbc
– dbc, Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 14:34
@dbc by now I've only seen strings or dictionaries of strings, but you've just scared me! I thinks it could be anything, even arrays... — Hernan Romero
– Hernan Romero, Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 14:49
@HernanRomero I think you should use Dictionary<int, object> — Dilshod K
– Dilshod K, Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 14:51
@DilshodK You get a non-deserialized JToken then, how you'll handle it?. -- It's not complicated to write a JsonConverter to deserialize these objects, whatever they are in input. Just decide to what to deserialize to. The point is if you need to serialize back and serialize back to what. If serialize all back to a Dictionary<string, string> could be a thing, then it's simple. The link posted in the first comment can be modified to handle this use-case. — Jimi
– Jimi, Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 15:00
@HernanRomero, you can serialize and deserialize to class incident { public string id { get; set; } public string title { get; set; } public Dictionary<int, object> custom_fields { get; set; } } — Dilshod K
– Dilshod K, Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 15:06

Hernan Romero · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-25 18:02:07Z

Thank you all guys for your comments. Thanks to them I figured it out and found a solution that works for me.

Basically, I've used the "Dictionary<int, object>" proposed by @DilshodK and then I check for the type of the object. If the object is a JObject I re-deserialize with another Dictionary, if not I use the original value.

class incident_custom
    {
        public string id{ get; set; }
        public string title { get; set; }
        public Dictionary<int, object> custom_fields { get; set; }
    }

incident_custom item = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<incident_custom>(responseBody);

Console.WriteLine(item.title);

foreach (var field in item.custom_fields)
{
    if (field.Value.GetType() == typeof(Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject))
    {

        Dictionary<string, object> values = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, object>>(field.Value.ToString());

        foreach (var value in values)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(field.Key + " - " + value.Value);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        Console.WriteLine(field.Key + " - " + field.Value);
    }
}

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