How to Deserialize JSON with Dynamic Child Object Keys in C#?

Deserializing Child Objects with Dynamic Keys

In certain scenarios, you may encounter JSON data with dynamic keys for child objects. To deserialize this data effectively, consider using dictionaries instead of traditional classes.

Using Dictionaries for Deserialization

Instead of creating a traditional class for each child object, you can utilize a Dictionary to represent the data. Each key in the dictionary represents a dynamic key, and each value is an object of type T, which should represent the data structure of the child object.

Defining the Classes

For this example, define the classes as follows:

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; }
}

Deserializing the JSON Data

To deserialize the JSON data into your RootObject class, use the following code:

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

Accessing Child Objects

Once deserialized, you can access the child objects directly through the dictionary key:

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

Example

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"
        }
    }
}

Using the provided code, you can deserialize the data and access each child object, resulting in 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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