Deserialization of JSON in C# into an object for API

Question

I am trying to get data from an API for an assignment, but i've gotten stuck along the way. I am fairly inexperienced in C# and have only really used Java and PHP before, but I would say my experience with both are also fairly limited (simple mysqli CRUD via PHP webforms and playing around with Java logic, made a few small games etc.), therefore I probably don't really know what I'm doing wrong or where the problem lies.

For some reason the JSON isn't deserialized in the code below.

Console.WriteLine(driversCollection.Drivers.Count); always returns null when attempting to count it. It does download the JSON properly from what I could tell after putting down a breakpoint in visual studio and seeing the local rawJSON value had been updated. I believe the JSON itself is wrongly formatted and have tried removing the backslashes by using Replace, which also doesn't work.

This is the link to the JSON: https://ergast.com/api/f1/drivers.json?callback=myParser

I apologize in advance for my subpar code and what is probably a simple solution, though I would be extremely grateful for any help I could get on this.

Drivers.cs

public class Drivers
    {
        string driverID;
        int permanentNumber;
        string code;
        string url;
        string givenName;
        string familyName;
        string dateOfBirth;
        string nationality;

        public string DriverID { get => driverID; set => driverID = value; }
        public int PermanentNumber { get => permanentNumber; set => permanentNumber = value; }
        public string Code { get => code; set => code = value; }
        public string Url { get => url; set => url = value; }
        public string GivenName { get => givenName; set => givenName = value; }
        public string FamilyName { get => familyName; set => familyName = value; }
        public string DateOfBirth { get => dateOfBirth; set => dateOfBirth = value; }
        public string Nationality { get => nationality; set => nationality = value; }
    }

DriversCollection.cs

    public class DriversCollection
    {
        private List<Drivers> drivers;

        public List<Drivers> Drivers { get => drivers; set => drivers = value; }
    } 

ReadJSON.aspx.cs

    public partial class ReadJSON : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            using (var webClient = new WebClient())
            {
                String rawJSON = webClient.DownloadString("http://ergast.com/api/f1/2019/drivers.json?callback=myParser&limit=1000");
                String editedJSON = rawJSON.Remove(rawJSON.Length - 1, 1);
                editedJSON = editedJSON.Remove(0, 9);
                editedJSON = editedJSON.Replace(@"\/", "/");
                editedJSON = editedJSON.Replace(@"\", string.Empty);
                DriversCollection driversCollection = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DriversCollection>(editedJSON);

                Console.WriteLine(driversCollection.Drivers.Count);
            }
        }
    }

Answer 1

You can achieve it by first parsing it into JObject and then deserializing the DriverTable from this JObject.

 using (var webClient = new WebClient())
        {
            String rawJSON = webClient.DownloadString("http://ergast.com/api/f1/2019/drivers.json?callback=myParser&limit=1000");
            String editedJSON = rawJSON.Remove(rawJSON.Length - 1, 1);
            editedJSON = editedJSON.Remove(0, 9);
            editedJSON = editedJSON.Replace(@"\/", "/");
            editedJSON = editedJSON.Replace(@"\", string.Empty);
            JObject data = JObject.Parse(editedJSON);
            DriversCollection driversCollection = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DriversCollection>(data["MRData"]["DriverTable"].ToString());

            Console.WriteLine(driversCollection.Drivers.Count);
        }