Deserializing variable Type JSON array using DataContractJsonSerializer

Question

I have a JSON string in this form:

string jsonStr = "[\"A\", [\"Martini\", \"alovell\"],[\"Martin\", \"lovell\"]]"

I am trying to deserialize the JSON using the C# .NET deserializer DataContractJsonSerializer with the following code snippet

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(jsonStr));
DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof<X>);
X data = (X)serializer.ReadObject(ms);

Now since the JSON array is an array of variable types I do not know what type of object X should be

If my String were

jsonStr = "[[\"Martini\", \"alovell\"],[\"Martin\", \"lovell\"]]"

I could use this:

X = List<List<String>>

and that would work for me. I was wondering if there is any way to deserialize variable type JSON array?

Answer 1

You could use Json.NET to do this.

JArray a = JArray.Parse(jsonStr);

The JArray would contain either strings or nested JArray's depending on the JSON.