Deserialize Nested Dictionary in from Json C#

Question

I have a class something like this

public class A{
    public Guid userId { get; set; }
    public Guid businessId { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<int, long> rights { get; set; }
}

And I want to covert this json to this class

    {
    "userId": "dc2af693-72e1-49a7-80aa-6416c6536bdf",
    "businessId": "0110eea4-7a47-4a7c-95ea-10547ab49652",
    "rights": "{\"19\":1,\"17\":15,\"18\":1,\"23\":1,\"1\":31,\"20\":3,\"3\":1,\"16\":0}",
   }

But when Im trying to convert it with NewtonSoft.Json

JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<A>(json);

I get the following error Cannot Cast System.string to System.Dictionary<int,long> What happens is that my rights get converted to a string something like this

"{"19":1, "17":15, "18":1, ..., "16":0}"

If I deserialize this string again it works as I desire is there better method to do this.

Answer 1

Since the rights is in string format, you can add custom JsonConverter which converts the string to dictionary

public class A
{
    public Guid userId { get; set; }
    public Guid businessId { get; set; }
    [JsonConverter(typeof(RightsSerializer))]
    public Dictionary<int, long> rights { get; set; }
}

Here is the RightsSerializer

public class RightsSerializer : JsonConverter
{
    public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)
    {
        return objectType == typeof(Dictionary<int, long>);
    }

    public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        if (reader.TokenType == JsonToken.Null) return null;

        var jt = JToken.Load(reader);
        return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<int, long>>(jt.Value<String>());
    }

    public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        serializer.Serialize(writer, value);
    }
}

And DeserializeObject

var json = File.ReadAllText("json1.json");
var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<A>(json);