C#•3y ago

✅ Managing JSON which varies in size and/or structure?

I'm working on two hobby projects at the moment, both are meant to accept json input but I'm struggling because C# seems quite strict on datatypes and I'm a noob.

In one project the JSON I return is massive and seems like it could be broken into multiple classes.
In the second project, the JSON structure seems to vary depending on the data being sent.

What's the best way to tackle these sorts of things? I appreciate there is a way to copy JSON into Visual Studio it can generate the class for you but I don't want to be tied to Visual Studio and it's still a lot of admin work.

For the varying JSON I captured about 100 entries and put them in a text file but I'm not even sure now how to compare them against each other to see if they're the same structure? Also apparently System.Text doesn't support the "dynamic" data type but Newtonsoft.Json is a thing of the past now?

Any advice or tips would be great, thank you!

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:52 PM

there isn't a way to copy code into Visual Studio and have it generate C# class models for you

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:52 PM

that's entirely separate tooling

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:53 PM

also, not wanting to tie yourself to Visual Studio is a rather silly idea. Visual Studio is what you want for .NET development, unless using Visual Studio is impossible for you

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:55 PM

if you're referring to the keyword as something System.Text does not support, but Newtonsoft does, that's nonsense. The keyword is a feature of the C# language, and has nothing to do with either of those two libraries

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:56 PM

it's also 100% not relevant for anything you would want to be doing with JSON

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:57 PM

if you mean "Dynamic" in a colloquial sense, that's also wrong, both System.Text.Json and Newtonsoft.Json support "dynamic" JSON modeling

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:57 PM

that is, modeling and working with JSON whose structure can vary

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:58 PM

your first step needs to be to understand the structure of the JSON you want to model, which means you need to go read the documentation from whoever is generating it

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:58 PM

if it's consistent every time, you'll want to either write or generate C# classes to match

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:59 PM

if it varies, you will either STILL want to write or generate classes, or you'll want to serialize to a document model and interpret that manually

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 8:59 PM

depending on how much variation there is

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 9:00 PM

use System.Text.Json unless you have a very specific reason that you can't

JJakenVeina there isn't a way to copy code into Visual Studio and have it generate C# class ...

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 10:52 PM

did they take that away?

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 10:52 PM

there is a way

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 10:52 PM

or was

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 10:53 PM

edit, paste special, json as classes

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 11:00 PM

within VS itself?

HHenkypenky edit, paste special, json as classes

HimmDawg•5/30/23, 11:00 PM

It still exists

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 11:00 PM

news to me

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 11:01 PM

definitely doesn't "tie" you into Visual Studio at all, if you did use it

HimmDawg•5/30/23, 11:01 PM

HimmDawg•5/30/23, 11:01 PM

I cant tell how good this is though

JJakenVeina within VS itself?

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 11:03 PM

yeah, but json2chsarp is better cause records

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 11:03 PM

and attributes and etc

JakenVeina•5/30/23, 11:03 PM

so is just writing your own damn code goodthinking

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 11:04 PM

yeah that's fun when you have 3 or 4 kvp's

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 11:04 PM

but when you have 400

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 11:04 PM

it becomes tedious

HimmDawg•5/30/23, 11:06 PM

True, but tools tend to fail for big, more complex json

Henkypenky•5/30/23, 11:08 PM

well if you don't check it

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

my bad it scrolled

JakenVeina•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

yes, yes, it's been covered

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

i deleted

JakenVeina•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

how dare you

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

yeah but the forum crap is horrible

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

i did not saw the scroll doom

JakenVeina•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

how dare you

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:04 AM

sorry

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:05 AM

fun fact OP never replied

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:05 AM

aaaaa

DarylOP•5/31/23, 8:05 AM

Oi I'm replying now sorry

JakenVeina•5/31/23, 8:05 AM

funner fact

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:05 AM

DarylOP•5/31/23, 8:05 AM

Thanks all for the responses. Yes the "Paste Special - JSON as Classes" is what I was referring to but I'm really just trying to understand how others approach working with JSON, regardless of IDE.

In my first project (SpaceTraders.io), I created my first account and was told I'd get an auth token back. I actually got so much JSON that it works out to be 25 classes. One for the ship, one for the crew, one for the fuel, one for the inventory, etc, etc...
In my second project (I just wanted to register my bank transactions to a SQL DB) the Bank's Documentation gave an example of the API Request I'd receive on a transaction but it turns out it's different for different types of transaction it's completely different.

My concern is that with these defined classes even if I get it working now, the reliability of my code is in the hands of the SpaceTraders/The Bank because if they make a small change to their API everything I've done could break and be a nightmare to debug.

Maybe I was misunderstanding what I read about System.Text.Json not allowing dynamic types. I was trying to get my head around this but it was way too advanced for me at this stage. https://code-maze.com/csharp-deserialize-json-into-dynamic-object/

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:06 AM

ok so let me answer complitely orthogonaly

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:07 AM

imagine if microsoft release something every year in dotnet

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:07 AM

that contains changes

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:07 AM

that can break your code

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:07 AM

does "new version of dotnet" seems to be what i'm describing ?

TeBeCo•5/31/23, 8:07 AM

like ...