How do I deserialize a Json object?

Question

This is the code I use to deserialize JSON.But when I try writing it in console, it says "System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[System.String, System.Object]"

System.Net.WebClient wc = new System.Net.WebClient();
string Jayson = wc.DownloadString("http://api.urbandictionary.com/v0/define?term=api");
object obj = JsonHelper.Deserialize(Jayson);
Dictionary<string, object> values = 
        JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, object>>(Jayson);
Console.WriteLine(values);

How do I deserialize it and extract only the "definition" from the JSON?

Answer 1

You can create some concrete types to map to and deserialize using those rather than more generic types, for example:

public class Result
{

    [JsonProperty("definition")]
    public string Definition { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("author")]
    public string Author { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("permalink")]
    public string PermaLink { get; set; }

}

public class Results
{

    [JsonProperty("list")]
    public List<Result> List { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("tags")]
    public List<string> Tags { get; set; }

}

Then:

var results = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Results>(json);

You can then iterate the definitions:

foreach(var result in results.List)
    Console.WriteLine(result.Definition);

Json.NET will ignore the other properties it can't map so you can add/remove them as needed.