How to deserialize dictionary types to json in dotnet core

Question

I am working on some integrations with SendGrid's APIs, particularly around the search functionality in emails.

The API response is like so:

{
   "result":{
      "personsemail@domain.com":{
         "contact":{
            "address_line_1":"",
            "address_line_2":"",
            "alternate_emails":[
               
            ],
            "city":"",
            "country":"",
            "email":"personsemail@domain.com",
            "first_name":"Bob",
            "id":"111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111",
            ...
         }
      },
      "anotheremail@domain.com":{
         "contact":{
            "address_line_1":"",
            "address_line_2":"",
            "alternate_emails":[
               
            ],
            "city":"",
            "country":"",
            "email":"anotheremail@domain.com",
            "first_name":"Alice",
            "id":"111112-1112-1112-1112-111111111112",
            ...
         }
      }
      ...
   }
}

Does anyone know how I can deserialize this appropriately so I can use it like a normal list to iterate/search with? I'm hoping I can use something like this:

var recipients = (await searchResponse.Content.ReadFromJsonAsync<**my-poco**>());

Which is similar to what I'm using for all the other calls - but I'm not sure how to create the POCO that will allow for a simple deserialization. I'm happy to ignore the top level personsemail@domain.com entry and just search through the results with linq..

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Answer 1

I ended up getting this working with the following class. This is a variation to Peter's answer:

public class SendGridContactSearchResponse
{
    [JsonProperty("result", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    //public Result Result { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, Contact> result { get; set; }
}

public partial class Contact
{
    [JsonProperty("contact", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public contact contact { get; set; }
}

public partial class contact
{
    [JsonProperty("address_line_1", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string AddressLine1 { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("address_line_2", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string AddressLine2 { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("alternate_emails", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public List<object> AlternateEmails { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("city", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string City { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("country", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string Country { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("email", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string Email { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("first_name", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string FirstName { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("id", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public Guid? Id { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("last_name", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("list_ids", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public List<object> ListIds { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("segment_ids", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public List<object> SegmentIds { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("postal_code", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string PostalCode { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("state_province_region", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string StateProvinceRegion { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("phone_number", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string PhoneNumber { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("whatsapp", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string Whatsapp { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("line", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string Line { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("facebook", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string Facebook { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("unique_name", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string UniqueName { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("custom_fields", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public CustomFields CustomFields { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("created_at", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public DateTimeOffset? CreatedAt { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("updated_at", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public DateTimeOffset? UpdatedAt { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("_metadata", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public Metadata Metadata { get; set; }
}

The fix was in the SendGridContactSearchResponse class referencing a Contact class in the dictionary. The invocation was this:

var searchResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<SendGridContactSearchResponse>(json);

and the deserialization worked fine!