parsing json w variable key value pairs in c#

I've got the following 

 [
   {    
     "name": "ATVI",
     "dailyClosePrice": [
       {
         "3/15/2017": 210.08,
         "4/6/2017": 235.08,
         "4/21/2017": 243.61,
         "2/16/2017": 205.43
       }
     ]
   },
   {
    "name": "ADBE",
    "dailyClosePrice": [
      {
        "3/15/2017": 241.96,
        "4/6/2017": 270.22,
        "4/21/2017": 281.22,
        "2/16/2017": 225.26
      }
    ]
  }
]

The actual file has many more than 2, but you can see there are two of the main object here. I'm having trouble parsing the key-value pairs such as "3/15/2017": 210.08.

I need to make a class out of this, I guess an example class would have

class Stock
{
    public string Name{get;set;}
    public List<Entry> Prices{get;set;}
}

class Entry
{
    public string Date{get;set;}
    public double Price{get;set;}
}

So I'm trying to parse the file into a List

I guess I could use a StreamReader and use the Seek method to find a ":", but what I am having trouble with is then how to be able to only read in "ATVI". Once I get "ATVI" for example I set that string to a Name in a Stock, then can Seek for "{" and read in "3/15/2017" and set that to a Date in an Entry then Seek to a ":" and read in the double, etc.

If I do the above, I don't know how to read in select elements of the stream, in C#. In C# I mostly have read in strings that have a common spacing, usually I would use C for more complex things like here, but I am really hoping to use c# instead of C for this.

I don't care what method I need to use, I just want to read in the file.

If I had something like below, I would just use NewtonSoft

[
  {
    "name": "ATVI",
    "dailyClosePrice": [
      {"Date":"3/15/2017", "price":210.08}, 
      {"Date":"3/15/2017", "price": 210.08},
      {"Date":"4/6/2017", "price": 235.08},
      {"Date":"4/21/2017", "price": 243.61}
    ]
  },
  {
    "name": "ADBE",
    "dailyClosePrice": [
      {"Date":"3/15/2017", "price":210.08}, 
      {"Date":"3/15/2017", "price": 210.08},
      {"Date":"4/6/2017", "price": 235.08},
      {"Date":"4/21/2017", "price": 243.61}
    ]
  }
]
Jon Skeet
people
quotationmark

You definitely shouldn't be parsing this by hand - Json.NET will be absolutely fine with this, so long as you model it correctly. The JSON represents a list of objects, each of which has a name (string) and a dailyClosePrice which appears to be a list which always has a single value, which is in turn an object mapping dates to prices. You can represent that fairly easily:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

public class Stock
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public List<Dictionary<string, decimal>> DailyClosePrice { get; set; }
}

class Test
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        string json = File.ReadAllText("test.json");
        var stocks = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<Stock>>(json);

        foreach (var stock in stocks)
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"Name: {stock.Name}");
            Console.WriteLine("Prices:");
            // Assume there's only ever a single entry, at least for now...
            var prices = stock.DailyClosePrice.Single();
            // TODO: Parse the (ugly, US-based) date format...
            var entries = prices.Select(kvp => new { Date = kvp.Key, Price = kvp.Value });
            foreach (var entry in entries)
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"  {entry.Date}: {entry.Price}");
            }
        }
    }
}

Now that Stock class is pretty ugly, but it represents what's in the JSON - it should then be easy enough to convert that representation into a more palatable one for the rest of your code.

people

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