Is there in JSON function which dumps JSON array of dictionary into tab separated text files - json

Question

I have an JSON array as defined below:-
[
{"Name":"Ayush","Age":24,"Job":"Developer"},
{"Name":"Monika","Age":23,"Job":"Developer"},
{"Name":"Chinmay","Age":23,"Job":"Developer"}
]
I want to dump this into text file in following format:-
Name Age Job
Ayush 24 Developer
Monika 23 Developer
Chinmay 23 Developer
Is there any C# function to accomplish the above? If not, how can i achieve it with minimum memory consumption?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

There is no such built-in function. You may achieve this by reading JTokens from input stream using JsonTextReader and writing their values into another stream. Stream input and output ensures minimal memory footprint.
using (var inputStream = File.OpenRead("input.json"))
using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(inputStream))
using (var jsonTextReader = new JsonTextReader(streamReader))
using (var outputStream = File.OpenWrite("output.csv"))
using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(outputStream))
{
var firstItem = true;
while (jsonTextReader.Read())
{
if (jsonTextReader.TokenType == JsonToken.StartObject)
{
var jObject = JObject.ReadFrom(jsonTextReader);
if (firstItem)
{
streamWriter.WriteLine(string.Join("\t",
jObject.Children().Select(c => (c as JProperty).Name)));
firstItem = false;
}
streamWriter.WriteLine(string.Join("\t",
jObject.Values().Select(t => t.ToString())));
}
}
}
Demo: https://dotnetfiddle.net/2fCRa6. (I used MemoryStream and Console instead of input and output file streams in this demo since .NET Fiddle does not allow file IO, but the idea is the same.)

Answer 2

You can create a class with Name, Age and Job as properties.
public class Info{
public string Name { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
public string Job { get; set; }
}
Then in another function use we can use System.Web.Script.Serialization class(to use this class make sure you have referenced System.Web.Extensions in project references). Once done we can use JavaScriptSerializer class and get list of objects from the json data. Then we can iterate over each item and add it two our file with a tab as a delimeter.
public static void WriteDetailsInFile(string jsonData)
{
var list = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<List<Info>>(jsonData);
using (var streamWriter = File.AppendText("D:MyFile.txt"))
{
streamWriter.WriteLine("Name\tAge\tJob");
foreach (var item in list)
{
streamWriter.WriteLine(item.Name + "\t" + item.Age + "\t" + item.Job);
}
}
}
//driver
public static void Main()
{
string data = #"[
{ ""Name"":""Ayush"",""Age"":24,""Job"":""Developer""},
{ ""Name"":""Monika"",""Age"":23,""Job"":""Developer""},
{ ""Name"":""Chinmay"",""Age"":23,""Job"":""Developer""}
]";
WriteDetailsInFile(data);
}