Cannot deserialize the JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) into type ' ' because type requires JSON object (e.g. {"name":"value"}) to deserialize correctly

Avinash picture Avinash · Mar 21, 2014 · Viewed 198.3k times · Source

I have this JSON:

[
    {
        "Attributes": [
            {
                "Key": "Name",
                "Value": {
                    "Value": "Acc 1",
                    "Values": [
                        "Acc 1"
                    ]
                }
            },
            {
                "Key": "Id",
                "Value": {
                    "Value": "1",
                    "Values": [
                        "1"
                    ]
                }
            }
        ],
        "Name": "account",
        "Id": "1"
    },
    {
        "Attributes": [
            {
                "Key": "Name",
                "Value": {
                    "Value": "Acc 2",
                    "Values": [
                        "Acc 2"
                    ]
                }
            },
            {
                "Key": "Id",
                "Value": {
                    "Value": "2",
                    "Values": [
                        "2"
                    ]
                }
            }
        ],
        "Name": "account",
        "Id": "2"
    },
    {
        "Attributes": [
            {
                "Key": "Name",
                "Value": {
                    "Value": "Acc 3",
                    "Values": [
                        "Acc 3"
                    ]
                }
            },
            {
                "Key": "Id",
                "Value": {
                    "Value": "3",
                    "Values": [
                        "3"
                    ]
                }
            }
        ],
        "Name": "account",
        "Id": "2"
    }
]

And I have these classes:

public class RetrieveMultipleResponse
{
    public List<Attribute> Attributes { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Id { get; set; }
}

public class Value
{
    [JsonProperty("Value")]
    public string value { get; set; }
    public List<string> Values { get; set; }
}

public class Attribute
{
    public string Key { get; set; }
    public Value Value { get; set; }
}

I am trying to deserialize the above JSON using the code below:

var objResponse1 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RetrieveMultipleResponse>(JsonStr);

but I am getting this error:

Cannot deserialize the current JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) into type 'test.Model.RetrieveMultipleResponse' because the type requires a JSON object (e.g. {"name":"value"}) to deserialize correctly. To fix this error either change the JSON to a JSON object (e.g. {"name":"value"}) or change the deserialized type to an array or a type that implements a collection interface (e.g. ICollection, IList) like List that can be deserialized from a JSON array. JsonArrayAttribute can also be added to the type to force it to deserialize from a JSON array. Path '', line 1, position 1.

Answer

har07 picture har07 · Mar 21, 2014

Your json string is wrapped within square brackets ([]), hence it is interpreted as array instead of single RetrieveMultipleResponse object. Therefore, you need to deserialize it to type collection of RetrieveMultipleResponse, for example :

var objResponse1 = 
    JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<RetrieveMultipleResponse>>(JsonStr);