deserialize API response with different json value in the result

Question

I'm querying an external service and wanted to deserialize the response into a customer object but the issue is response for each customer may be different. some customer may have Sales entity in the response and few may have Marketing.

The json property for sales entity is SalesId and for marketing is MarketingId. Can you advise whether the model I use to store result is correct or any improvement ? If so, how would I deserialize the response without knowing the correct json property ?

For Customer 66666

{
  "customerId": "66666",
  "customerName": "test1234",  
  "dependentEntity": [
    {
      "SalesId": "3433434",
      "SalesPersonName": "343434",
      "SaleSource": "StorePurchase"
    }
  ]
}

For Customer 5555

{
  "customerId": "55555",
  "customerName": "test2",  
  "dependentEntity": [
    {
      "MarketingId": "3433434",
      "MarketingAppName": "343434",
      "MarketingSource": "Online"
    }
  ]
}

Here is the Model I'm thinking but not sure the correct one

public class Customer
{
     public string customerId { get; set; } 
     public string customerName { get; set; }  
     public IList<T> dependentList { get; set; }
}

public class Dependent
{
     [JsonProperty("Id")]
     public string Id { get; set; } 
     public string Name { get; set; }  
     public string Source { get; set; }
}

Answer 1

You could probably try something like the following one:

public class DependentEntity
{

    [JsonProperty("SalesId")]
    public string SalesId { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("SalesPersonName")]
    public string SalesPersonName { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("SaleSource")]
    public string SaleSource { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("MarketingId")]
    public string MarketingId { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("MarketingAppName")]
    public string MarketingAppName { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("MarketingSource")]
    public string MarketingSource { get; set; }
}

public class Customer
{

    [JsonProperty("customerId")]
    public string CustomerId { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("customerName")]
    public string CustomerName { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("dependentEntity")]
    public IList<DependentEntity> DependentEntity { get; set; }
}

We have a type for DependentEntity that has both the attributes of Marketing and Sales object. After parsing your input, you could create a logic (checking the attributes) based on which you could check if a DependentEntity is a Marketing or a Sales object.

The above classes was generated using, jsonutils.

Answer 2

If we can assume that the dependentEntity contains only a single type of objects then you can use json.net's schema to perform branching based on the matching schema.

---

So, lets suppose you have these dependent entity definitions:

public class DependentMarket
{
     public string MarketingId { get; set; } 
     public string MarketingAppName { get; set; }  
     public string MarketingSource { get; set; }
}

public class DependentSales
{
     public string SalesId { get; set; } 
     public string SalesPersonName { get; set; }  
     [JsonProperty("SaleSource")]
     public string SalesSource { get; set; }
}
...

Then you can use these classes to generate json schemas dynamically:

private static JSchema marketSchema;
private static JSchema salesSchema;

//...
var generator = new JSchemaGenerator();
marketSchema = generator.Generate(typeof(DependentMarket));
salesSchema = generator.Generate(typeof(DependentSales));

And finally you can do the branching like this:

var json = "...";
var semiParsedJson = JObject.Parse(json);
JArray dependentEntities = (JArray)semiParsedJson["dependentEntity"];
JObject probeEntity = (JObject)dependentEntities.First();

if (probeEntity.IsValid(marketSchema))
{
    var marketEntities = dependentEntities.ToObject<List<DependentMarket>>();
    ...

}
else if (probeEntity.IsValid(salesSchema))
{
    var salesEntities = dependentEntities.ToObject<List<DependentSales>>();
    ...
}
else if ...
else
{
    throw new NotSupportedException("The provided json format is not supported");
}