C# Deserialize JSON within JSON

Question

I have a JSON message in string form which looks something like this:

{"Event":"Payment", "Desc":"Deschereblahblahblah", Data":"{"Result":3,"Reference":12345 ... } }

I just want to know how is best to get the data part of the message, (I'm using JavascriptSerializer currently) and then the inside "Data" into another variable. I can grab the Event easily enough, but if I then try a second Serialization to get the data it errors!

Would it be best to do it dynamically, or to use classes?

Answer 1

If you need to extracy only part of data in one place, I'd recommend you to use JObject from Newtonsoft Json.Net;

var json =
    "{\"Event\":\"Payment\", \"Desc\":\"Deschereblahblahblah\",\"Data\":{\"Result\":3,\"Reference\":12345 } }";


var data = JObject.Parse(json)["Data"];

var result = data["Result"].Value<int>();
var reference = data["Reference"].Value<int>();

You could also prepare special class:

public class Data
{
    public int Result { get; set; }
    public int Reference { get; set; }
}

Then:

var dataInstance = JObject.Parse(json)["Data"].ToObject<Data>();