Question 212935 in Json Question posted in
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JSON class when the number of fields is unknown

How to write a JSON class for the following when the number of fields in "amounts" is unknown.

{
    "amounts": {
        "a": 100,
        "b": 72
        ...
        ...
   }
}
  • I do understand that "amounts" should have been an array, but I’m not
    at will to change this.
  • All children of "amounts" are guaranteed to be simple key-value pairs with int values.

Thanks in advance.

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    but I’m not at will to change this.

    You can use Dictionary<string, ...> which is quite a common convention among JSON serializers in .NET (at least 2 of the most popular use it – Newtonsoft’s Json.NET and System.Text.Json). For example:

    public class MyWrapper
{
    public Dictionary<string, int> Amounts {get; set;}
}

    P.S.

    Depending on serializer/settings used you might need to annotate the property with attribute with property name matching the source json casing.

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  2. 0

    As Guru Stron already mentioned – you can use Dictionary<string, int> for this. However, I believe a cleaner design will be like that:

    {
    "amounts": [
        {
            "key": "a",
            "value": 100
        },
        {
            "key": "b",
            "value": 72
        },
        ...
    ]
}

    This will let you iterate over the amounts easily without being "surprised" by unexpected keys.
    You can achieve this by creating an Amount object with 2 properties – string key, int value, and then amounts can be List<Amount>.

    Besides clean code, this design will help you to add more properties to an "Amount" in future if needed, by simply adding another property to Amount class.

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