Newtonsoft.DeserializeObject for generic class - json

Question

I have a JSON response like the following
{
"msg": "1",
"code": "2",
"data": [
{
"a": "3",
"b": "4"
}
],
"ts": "5"
}
I would like to create a generic class
public class DTWSResponse<T>
{
public string msg { get; set; }
public string code { get; set; }
public T data { get; set; }
public long ts { get; set; }
}
so this class will map each of the variable. But the data portion can be generic, i.e. it might have different format rather than 2 variables a and b.
So I create another class
public class DTProf
{
public string a { get; set; }
public string b { get; set; }
}
and in my code, I call as
DTWSResponse<DTProf> prof = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DTWSResponse<DTProf>>(json);
But I'm getting the following error
An exception of type 'Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializationException' occurred in Newtonsoft.Json.dll but was not handled in user code
Additional information: Cannot deserialize the current JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) into type 'DataTransfer.DTProfile' 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<T> 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 'data', line 1, position 40.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Use the correct type for the generic type argument
the JSON shown has a collection for the data property. So use a collection as the type argument. No need to change the generic class.
var prof = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DTWSResponse<IList<DTProf>>>(json);
var a = prof.data[0].a;

Answer 2

Make data a generic list and you should be fine...
public class DTWSResponse<T>
{
public string msg { get; set; }
public string code { get; set; }
public IList<T> data { get; set; }
public long ts { get; set; }
}