Send JSON via POST in C# and Use LINQ to access Objects

Question

I want to be able to access the JSON objects with LINQ when the JSON is returned.

I have referred to Send JSON via POST in C# and Receive the JSON returned? and Send and receive json via HttpClient

This is what I have so far

 public static async Task<string> GetMailTip(string user)
        {
            var jsonData = new StringContent(FormatJson(CreateJsonGettingMailTip(user)), Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
            var payload = await client.PostAsync($"https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/{user}/getMailTips", jsonData);
            string responseContent = "";

            if (payload.Content != null)
            {
                responseContent = await payload.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

                Console.WriteLine(responseContent);
            }

            var getMailTip = responseContent["value"]
              .Children()
              .Where(i => i != null)
              .Select(c => c[""][""].Value<string>().Trim());

            return responseContent;
        }

The returned JSON is

{
    "@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#Collection(microsoft.graph.mailTips)",
    "value": [
        {
            "emailAddress": {
                "name": "",
                "address": ""
            },
            "automaticReplies": {
                "message": "",
                "messageLanguage": {
                    "locale": "",
                    "displayName": ""
                },
                "scheduledStartTime": {
                    "dateTime": "",
                    "timeZone": ""
                },
                "scheduledEndTime": {
                    "dateTime": "",
                    "timeZone": ""
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

I want to be able to access the message property in the JSON with LINQ

Any help would be appreciated

Answer 1

You go to http://quicktype.io (or similar online service, jsonutils, json2csharp, or use the Visual studio Paste Json as Classes feature - of all the sites that do this QT is the most full featured) to turn your json into classes. This makes it nicer to work with:

// <auto-generated />
//
// To parse this JSON data, add NuGet 'Newtonsoft.Json' then do:
//
//    using SomeNamespaceHere;
//
//    var rootClassNameHere = RootClassNameHere.FromJson(jsonString);

namespace SomeNamespaceHere
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;

    using System.Globalization;
    using Newtonsoft.Json;
    using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters;

    public partial class RootClassNameHere
    {
        [JsonProperty("@odata.context")]
        public Uri OdataContext { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("value")]
        public Value[] Value { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class Value
    {
        [JsonProperty("emailAddress")]
        public EmailAddress EmailAddress { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("automaticReplies")]
        public AutomaticReplies AutomaticReplies { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class AutomaticReplies
    {
        [JsonProperty("message")]
        public string Message { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("messageLanguage")]
        public MessageLanguage MessageLanguage { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("scheduledStartTime")]
        public ScheduledTime ScheduledStartTime { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("scheduledEndTime")]
        public ScheduledTime ScheduledEndTime { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class MessageLanguage
    {
        [JsonProperty("locale")]
        public string Locale { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("displayName")]
        public string DisplayName { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class ScheduledTime
    {
        [JsonProperty("dateTime")]
        public string DateTime { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("timeZone")]
        public string TimeZone { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class EmailAddress
    {
        [JsonProperty("name")]
        public string Name { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("address")]
        public string Address { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class RootClassNameHere
    {
        public static RootClassNameHere FromJson(string json) => JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootClassNameHere>(json, SomeNamespaceHere.Converter.Settings);
    }

    public static class Serialize
    {
        public static string ToJson(this RootClassNameHere self) => JsonConvert.SerializeObject(self, SomeNamespaceHere.Converter.Settings);
    }

    internal static class Converter
    {
        public static readonly JsonSerializerSettings Settings = new JsonSerializerSettings
        {
            MetadataPropertyHandling = MetadataPropertyHandling.Ignore,
            DateParseHandling = DateParseHandling.None,
            Converters =
            {
                new IsoDateTimeConverter { DateTimeStyles = DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal }
            },
        };
    }
}

(I chose "SomeNamespaceHere" and "RootClassNameHere" for the relevant names of namespace and class root; you might choose different)

And then you use it like this (the deser step will work differently depending on the service you used):

var rootClassNameHere = RootClassNameHere.FromJson(jsonString); //deser
var someLinq = rootClassNameHere.Value.Select(v => v.AutomaticReplies.Message); //query