How to deserialize Json String dynamically

Question

I have consume Survey data via SSE Stream that gives me each persons answers line by line with this format for Survey X:

{\"data\":[\"4         


        

Answer 1

Assuming that this is the content of the stream:

{"data":["4482359","12526","5","5","","Yes, that is right","1"]}
{"data":["2223446","65432","3","3","","Nope, that's not right","0"]}
(...)

you can deserialize these lines using a List. Something like this:

using System.IO;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

public class RootObject
{
    public List data { get; set; }
}

That JSON streaming can be deserialize in two simple ways:

• If you don't really need to parse the stream line by line, read the stream to end, then use a JsonTextReader to read the resulting string and JsonSerializer to deserialize the reader's result into an instance of the class you're using as container for the data:

List dataObjects = new List();

using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(stream))
{
    var JSONObject = sr.ReadToEnd();
    var reader = new JsonTextReader(new StringReader(JSONObject)) { SupportMultipleContent = true };
    var serializer = new JsonSerializer();

    while (reader.Read()) {
        dataObjects.Add(serializer.Deserialize(reader));
    }
    reader.Close();
}

VB.Net version:

Imports System.IO
Imports Newtonsoft.Json

Public Class RootObject
    Public Property MyData As List(Of String)
End Class

Dim dataObjects As New List(Of RootObject)()
Using sr As New StreamReader(stream)
    Dim JSONObject As String = sr.ReadToEnd()

    Dim reader = New JsonTextReader(New StringReader(JSONObject)) With {
        .SupportMultipleContent = True
    }
    Dim serializer = New JsonSerializer()
    While reader.Read()
        dataObjects.Add(serializer.Deserialize(Of RootObject)(reader))
    End While
    reader.Close()
End Using

• If you need to parse the stream line by line for some reason not specified here, you could insert an array delimiter [ before the first line and ] after the last line, separating each line with a (comma). You have now a functional array that can be deserialized with JsonConvert.DeserializeObject