How can JSON.NET efficiently deserialize JSON with dynamic keys into accessible objects?

Dynamic Keyed Object Deserialization with JSON.NET

When working with JSON data containing objects with dynamic keys, conventional class deserialization can pose challenges. This article will explore how to tackle this scenario using JSON.NET.

Problem Statement

Consider the following JSON data:

{
    "users" : {
        "100034" : {
            "name"  : "tom",
            "state" : "WA",
            "id"    : "cedf-c56f-18a4-4b1"
        },
        "10045" : {
            "name"  : "steve",
            "state" : "NY",
            "id"    : "ebb2-92bf-3062-7774"
        },
        "12345" : {
            "name"  : "mike",
            "state" : "MA",
            "id"    : "fb60-b34f-6dc8-aaf7"
        }
    }
}

How can we access each object directly from this data, without the need for manual key parsing?

Solution

JSON.NET offers a convenient solution for deserializing objects with dynamic keys using its Dictionary<string, T> class. This class allows us to represent JSON objects as dictionaries, where the keys are strings and the values are objects of type T.

Implementation

To achieve this, we define two classes:

class RootObject
{
    public Dictionary<string, User> users { get; set; }
}

class User
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string state { get; set; }
    public string id { get; set; }
}

string json = @"
{
    ""users"": {
        ""10045"": {
            ""name"": ""steve"",
            ""state"": ""NY"",
            ""id"": ""ebb2-92bf-3062-7774""
        },
        ""12345"": {
            ""name"": ""mike"",
            ""state"": ""MA"",
            ""id"": ""fb60-b34f-6dc8-aaf7""
        },
        ""100034"": {
            ""name"": ""tom"",
            ""state"": ""WA"",
            ""id"": ""cedf-c56f-18a4-4b1""
        }
    }
}";

RootObject root = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(json);

Usage

The following code demonstrates how to access the objects from the deserialized data:

foreach (string key in root.users.Keys)
{
    Console.WriteLine("key: " + key);
    User user = root.users[key];
    Console.WriteLine("name: " + user.name);
    Console.WriteLine("state: " + user.state);
    Console.WriteLine("id: " + user.id);
    Console.WriteLine();
}

Output

The code will produce the following output:

key: 10045
name: steve
state: NY
id: ebb2-92bf-3062-7774

key: 12345
name: mike
state: MA
id: fb60-b34f-6dc8-aaf7

key: 100034
name: tom
state: WA
id: cedf-c56f-18a4-4b1

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