Parse JSON string with inconsistent field names

Question

I am having trouble in deserializing the following JSON structure. Each node contains a ID and multiple language code with values. The number of language attributes is not consi

Answer 1

Method 1:

One approach would be to simply adding all the values and checking if they exist. For example this is the class that contains all the language values:

public class Word
{
    public string id { get; set; }
    public string eng { get; set; }
    public string ger { get; set; }
    public string fre { get; set; }
}

And you get the list such as:

var words  = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<Word>>(json);

Of course this assumes there are only 3 languages and more will not be added (which never happens!)

Method 2:

As shown in this thread, you can deserialize to a list of dictionary objects like this:

var words = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<Dictionary<string, string>>>(json);

And you can access all keys and values like this:

foreach (var word in words)
{
    foreach (var key in word.Keys)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"value for the key {key} is {word[key]}");
    }
}

This will produce the following result:

value for the key id is w_312457

value for the key eng is deep-fat frying

value for the key ger is Frittieren

value for the key id is w_312458

value for the key fre is frying

value for the key ger is braten (in Öl)

value for the key id is w_312477

value for the key ger is perfekt gewürzte und abgestimmte Soße