How do I parse this JSON using VB.net? - json

Question

So, I'm working on a school project, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with this data file that contains a pretty large amount of JSON objects. I know the basics of VB.net, basic event handling, etc.
I know the basics of designing Structures, and stuff like that, but I need to figure out how to parse and create a list of objects from a 5MB JSON file that contains entries such as the following:
{
"Air Elemental":{
"layout":"normal",
"name":"Air Elemental",
"manaCost":"{3}{U}{U}",
"cmc":5,
"colors":[
"Blue"
],
"type":"Creature — Elemental",
"types":[
"Creature"
],
"subtypes":[
"Elemental"
],
"text":"Flying",
"power":"4",
"toughness":"4",
"imageName":"air elemental"
},
"Ancestral Recall":{
"layout":"normal",
"name":"Ancestral Recall",
"manaCost":"{U}",
"cmc":1,
"colors":[
"Blue"
],
"type":"Instant",
"types":[
"Instant"
],
"text":"Target player draws three cards.",
"imageName":"ancestral recall"
},
"Animate Artifact":{
"layout":"normal",
"name":"Animate Artifact",
"manaCost":"{3}{U}",
"cmc":4,
"colors":[
"Blue"
],
"type":"Enchantment — Aura",
"types":[
"Enchantment"
],
"subtypes":[
"Aura"
],
"text":"Enchant artifact\nAs long as enchanted artifact isn't a creature, it's an artifact creature with power and toughness each equal to its converted mana cost.",
"imageName":"animate artifact"
}
}
If anyone could be of assistance, or just sort of point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it. I think the part that's throwing me off the most is that each card name is a key in itself, and all of the card's data is the value associated with the name "key"...

Answer 1

In this case it hardly matters how many there are because they are all structured the same way:
Public Class Spell
Public Property layout As String
Public Property name As String
Public Property manaCost As String
Public Property cmc As Integer
Public Property colors As String()
Public Property type As String
Public Property types As String()
Public Property subtypes As String()
Public Property text As String
Public Property power As String
Public Property toughness As String
Public Property imageName As String
End Class
I have no idea what the data represents, it looks like some fantasy game. When deserialized (I used Newtonsoft), you will end up with a Dictionary of spells with the key being "Air Elemental" and "Animate Artifact" etc. It takes but one line of code:
Dim jstr As String = from whereever
Dim mySpells = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(Of Dictionary(Of String, Spell))(jstr)
Using the NET JavaScriptSerializer is about the same:
Dim jss As New JavaScriptSerializer
Dim myspells = jss.DeserializeObject(jstr)
You can use http://jsonutils.com/, or even Paste Special in VS, to help parse what the structures (classes, really) need to look like. However, it pays to use your brain and look at them. A robot will create 3 classes for that JSON and another class container to hold them. If there were 100 of them it would be needlessly long.
Since each item is identical and the JSON one class can be used for each. Since the JSON is formatted to accommodate, a standard NET dictionary works fine.

Answer 2

There is a wonderful feature in VS 2013 called "Paste as JSON" under the Edit menu, so copy your JSON string and choose this feature.
Be aware that there is a small bug that I reported to MS in the way that it declares arrays. The text it gives you will be
Public Property x() as DataType
however it needs to be changed to
Public Property x as DataType()
in order to be correctly declared as an array.