Deserialize response from firebase

Question

I am using c# interacting with Firebase via the provided REST api.

When I send a GET request to a node, I get the children as expected.

{
    "49d360b0-b3a8-4240-bd69-1f91b07365fd" : {
        "id" : "49d360b0-b3a8-4240-bd69-1f91b07365fd",
        "name" : "Foo",
        "value" : "Love me some foo"
    },
    "8b87b4df-9c04-480b-bb53-43e22059ccfa" : {
        "id" : "8b87b4df-9c04-480b-bb53-43e22059ccfa",
        "name" : "Bar",
        "value" : "Yay, bar"
    },
    "966fe014-08c3-4f64-93a3-7bd8ed396177" : {
        "id" : "966fe014-08c3-4f64-93a3-7bd8ed396177",
        "name" : "Name",
        "value" : "Text"
    }
}

There can be any number of children. I won't know how many until after I get the response. I am trying to get this deserialized into a List, though any kind of IEnumerable should be fine, since that can be converted to a list easily. My Entry class looks like this:

public class Entry
{
    public string id { get; set; }

    public string name { get; set; }

    public string value { get; set; }
}

How do I do the deserialization? I have been using Newtonsoft for most of my JSON handling, will I need to use a different library?

UPDATE: the names of the objects in the JSON are also unknown before making the call, so solutions involving getting values by index won't be super helpful

Take a look at this solution - http://stackoverflow.com/a/8738149/2571926. — Ilya Luzyanin, Jul 24 '14 at 18:00
Thanks, that gets me started in the right direction. though It makes me realize that a bigger issue is that I don't know what the field names will be beforehand. — Erin Aarested, Jul 24 '14 at 18:13
You need to at least know the types of data, and what fields they have in order to deal with it. Otherwise, you're going to get so generic that your code will be hard to follow and debug. — krillgar, Jul 24 '14 at 18:34

Ilya Luzyanin · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-24T19:20:09.503

Here you go (a bit ugly):

public class Item
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

and deserializing code:

dynamic data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(jsonString);
var list = new List<Item>();
foreach (var itemDynamic in data)
{
    list.Add(JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Item>(((JProperty)itemDynamic).Value.ToString()));
}

I skip that Guid Id's in original json - do you need them? I will update my answer.
EDIT:
A bit shorter Linq version:

dynamic data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<dynamic>(jsonString);
var shorter = ((IDictionary<string, JToken>)data).Select(k => 
    JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Item>(k.Value.ToString())).ToList();

no, the id in the origional json is the same as the id in the object. So, skipping it is fine. Thanks for the help! — Erin Aarested, Jul 24 '14 at 18:32

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 02 '15 at 11:36

4

You could also deseriealize the result to a Dictionary like this:

Dictionary<string, Entry> entryDict = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, Entry>>(jsonString);

and then if you want a list of Entries:

List<Entry> entries = entryDict.Select(x => x.Value).ToList();

answered Aug 02 '15 at 11:36

Edminsson

2,426
20
25

your soltuion is the best one here! – Hassaan Raza Oct 27 '20 at 21:39

Deserialize response from firebase

2 Answers2