I'm trying to parse some results from a web service in C# visual studio 2010 that are coming back in JSON but the field named data is sometime a string and sometimes an object. I'm not sure how to get the data contracts to handle that. When it runs through the deserialization it just returns a null result for the everything. If i try a web request that doesn't have any profile_results then works OK.
The JSON looks like this
{
"ListSingleOrganization": {
"id": 86270,
"short_name": "someshort name",
"long_name": "Long name",
"created_at": "2014-05-02T14:21:06Z",
"is_disabled": false,
"description": "Verbose description",
"renewed_at": "2014-05-02T14:21:07Z",
"alternate_id": null,
"website_url": "http://www.url.com",
"member_count": 50,
"pic_url": "https://www.somepicture.com/1.jpg",
"umbrella_id": 36016,
"keywords": "Fraternity, Leadership, Human Service, Scholarship",
"category": {
"id": 53282,
"name": "Fraternities"
},
"profile_responses": [
{
"element": {
"id": 51350,
"name": "Group Email Address",
"type": "Email"
},
"data": "groupsemail@gmail.com"
},
{
"element": {
"id": 1239634,
"name": "Please list your organization's Twitter handle so we may follow you with our office's account. (@something)",
"type": "TextField"
},
"data": "@handle"
},
{
"element": {
"id": 1192652,
"name": "Is this a new organization?",
"type": "Radio"
},
"data": {
"id": 2003570,
"name": "No"
}
}
]
}
}
the difference is based on the element type but i don't know how to account for that with them having the same name.
right now i have
[DataContract]
class ListSingleOrganization
{
//other members
[DataMember(Name = "profile_responses")]
public List<profile_responses> profile_responses { get; set; }
}
[DataContract]
class profile_responses
{
[DataMember(Name = "element")]
public element element { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name="data")]
public data data {get; set; }
}
[DataContract]
class element
{
[DataMember(Name = "id")]
public int id { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name = "name")]
public string name { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name = "type")]
public string type { get; set; }
}
[DataContract]
class data
{
[DataMember(Order=1)]
public string raw { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name = "file_name")]
public string file_name { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name = "url")]
public string url { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name = "id")]
public int id { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name = "name")]
public string name { get; set; }
}
Couldn't get the DataContract Serializes to work with these irregularities so I went the dynamic object route and that worked.