How to read property names in array from json string?

Question

Here is the list of data I receive, property names are can be different;

{"data":"[
    {   
        "id":"1",
        "name":"aa",
        "email":"[email protected]",
        "address":"11"
    },
    {   
        "id":"2",
        "name":"bb",
        "email":"[email protected]",
        "address":"22"
    }
]"}

Here is my c# code

Which I get an error on the 3rd line. Unable to read json data. Check the url you typed.Invalid cast from 'System.String' to 'Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject'.

 var jsonStr = wc.DownloadString(url);
 JToken outer = JToken.Parse(jsonStr);
 JObject inner = outer["data"].Value<JObject>();

 List<string> keys = inner.Properties().Select(p => p.Name).ToList();

How can my output be like this;

id
name
emal
address

It would be great if I also consider n level array such as address > street and address > postcode

Many thanks.

I4V · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-25 19:31:44Z

6

var jObj = JObject.Parse(json);
var props = jObj["data"][0].Select(x => ((JProperty)x).Name).ToList();

BTW: your json is not correct, it should be something like this

{data:[
 { "id":"1", 
        "name":"aa",
        "email":"[email protected]",
        "address":"11"
    },
    {"id":"2",
        "name":"bb",
        "email":"[email protected]",
        "address":"22"
    }
]}

See the " after data: in your question

answered Aug 25, 2013 at 19:31

I4V

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4 Comments

Cem Over a year ago

updated json string now, but instead of removing it I had to wrap it with " as how it comes from the end point.

I4V Over a year ago

@Cem It is still not a valid json. How to parse invalid jsons is out of scope of this question and i don't know how it can be done easily.

I4V Over a year ago

@Cem See {"data":"[...]"}. Is it an array of objects or a single string? In this form it is neither.

Cem Over a year ago

Sorry I was passing string instead of object hence the ", now it works fine. thanks a lot.

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