Manipulating JSON String in C# without Object

Question

I have JSON String which I am reading from file. I don't have the source of the JSON Object. So I can't call JsonConvert.DeserializeObject.

However I want check if the JSON String has specific structure, if yes, append some string or If not append the structure.

allmodules {
    feature: 'test-a'
}

submodules {
    //some data
}

Assume if there's not allmodules, I would like to append my structure

allmodules {
    feature: 'debug-a'
}

If it's already available, just append feature: 'debug-a'

And so on I have some custom work to do. Is there any efficient way to do this without breaking JSON format. Most of the questions regarding String to Object de-serialization, however as I mentioned I don't have original Object, and can't do that.

Answer 1

You can do this using JObject and doing a little manual parsing. It could look something like this:

public string AppendAllModules(string json)
{
    var obj = JObject.Parse(json);
    JToken token;
    if (obj.TryGetValue("allmodules", out token))
        return json;

    obj.Add(new JProperty("allmodules", new JObject(new JProperty("feature", "test-a"))));
    return obj.ToString();
}

Given:

{
    "submodules": {
        "name": "yuval"
    }
}

Would yield:

{
  "submodules": {
    "name": "yuval"
  },
  "allmodules": {
    "feature": "test-a"
  }
}