How to create a base JSON schema class which handle custom data type in response?

Question

I'm creating a library wrapper which handle all API requests of this football site. When I call an endpoint, this response structure is returned:

{
    "get": "countries",
    "parameters": [],
    "errors": [],
    "results": 161,
    "paging": {
        "current": 1,
        "total": 1
    },
    "response": [
        {
            "name": "Albania",
            "code": "AL",
            "flag": "https://media.api-sports.io/flags/al.svg"
        },
        {
            "name": "Algeria",
            "code": "DZ",
            "flag": "https://media.api-sports.io/flags/dz.svg"
        },
        {
            "name": "Andorra",
            "code": "AD",
            "flag": "https://media.api-sports.io/flags/ad.svg"
        },
    ]
}

The example above, is the /countries endpoint. I have used Quicktype to generate the schema structure, and I got this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Globalization;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters;

namespace FootballAPI.Models
{
    public partial class Temperatures
    {
        [JsonProperty("get")]
        public string Get { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("parameters")]
        public object[] Parameters { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("errors")]
        public object[] Errors { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("results")]
        public long Results { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("paging")]
        public Paging Paging { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("response")]
        public Response[] Response { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class Paging
    {
        [JsonProperty("current")]
        public long Current { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("total")]
        public long Total { get; set; }
    }

    public partial class Response
    {
        [JsonProperty("name")]
        public string Name { get; set; }

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

        [JsonProperty("flag")]
        public Uri Flag { get; set; }
    }
}

What I'm trying to do is have a base structure schema which contains everything except the response property. In the example above response must be an instance of Country which is:

public class Country 
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string code { get; set; }
    public string flag { get; set; }
}

how can I tell to the base schema above to use Country as T object? I should be able to correctly parse everything with Newtonsoft.JSON:

JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Country>;

I have different methods like GetCountries() that only pass the query string, in that case /countries. So I know the specific type I expect "response" to be at that time.

Do you know the type `Country ` *statically, in advance* when you make the call to `sonConvert.DeserializeObject`? Or is the returned result polymorphic in the sense you don't know in advance what type gets returned and you will need to check the value of `"get": "countries"`? — dbc, Aug 21 '21 at 16:34
@dbc I have different methods like `GetCountries()` that only pass the query string, in that case `/countries`. So I can also pass the type, or I though to convert the response directly in the `GetCountries()` method, so: `GetCountries()` call the network client which return the structure above, then I parse the structure of response inside `GetCountries()`. I don't know if there is a better solution for this — sfarzoso, Aug 21 '21 at 16:56
Then is this `ResponseList` all you're looking for? https://dotnetfiddle.net/XXt0Eo? — dbc, Aug 21 '21 at 17:11

score -1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '21 at 16:59

just try these classes


public class Country
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string code { get; set; }
    public string flag { get; set; }
}

public class Countries
{
    public string get { get; set; }
    public List<object> parameters { get; set; }
    public List<object> errors { get; set; }
    public int results { get; set; }
    public Paging paging { get; set; }
    public List<Country> response { get; set; }
}
public class Paging
{
    public int current { get; set; }
    public int total { get; set; }
}

you can use

JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Countries>(json);

How to create a base JSON schema class which handle custom data type in response?

1 Answers1