Json.Net setting property name as numbers - json

Question

Is there a short, more clean way to achieve this ?
public class Sidebar
{
[JsonProperty("0")]
public string Hurry = "hurry";
[JsonProperty("1")]
public string Dont_Spam_This_Button = "don't spam this button";
[JsonProperty("2")]
public string Navigation = "navigation";
[JsonProperty("3")]
public string Overview = "overview";
i want to objects to be numbered so is there a way to do that programatically instead of using attributes and manually counting ?

Answer 1

Yes, you can get the result you want using a custom JsonConverter like this one:
class NumberedPropertiesConverter : JsonConverter
{
public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)
{
return true;
}
public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer)
{
JObject jo = new JObject();
int count = 0;
foreach (MemberInfo member in value.GetType().GetMembers())
{
object memberVal = null;
if (member.MemberType == MemberTypes.Field)
{
memberVal = ((FieldInfo)member).GetValue(value);
}
else if (member.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property)
{
memberVal = ((PropertyInfo)member).GetValue(value);
}
else
{
continue;
}
JToken token = memberVal != null ? JToken.FromObject(memberVal, serializer) : null;
jo.Add(count.ToString(), token);
count++;
}
jo.WriteTo(writer);
}
public override bool CanRead
{
get { return false; }
}
public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}
To use the converter, just mark your class with a [JsonConverter] attribute specifying the type of the custom converter:
[JsonConverter(typeof(NumberedPropertiesConverter))]
public class Sidebar
{
...
}
One important note: the properties/fields will be numbered according to the order returned by the Type.GetMembers() method. Generally, this will match the order declared in the class; however, if you have a mix of public properties and public fields, then all of the properties will be returned before all of the fields.
Here is a demo:
public class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
Sidebar sb = new Sidebar();
string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(sb, Formatting.Indented);
Console.WriteLine(json);
}
}
[JsonConverter(typeof(NumberedPropertiesConverter))]
public class Sidebar
{
public string Foo { get { return "foo property"; } }
public string Hurry = "hurry";
public string Dont_Spam_This_Button = "don't spam this button";
public string Navigation = "navigation";
public string Overview = "overview";
public string Bar { get { return "bar property"; } }
}
Output:
{
"0": "foo property",
"1": "bar property",
"2": "hurry",
"3": "don't spam this button",
"4": "navigation",
"5": "overview"
}
Fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/aZ51qv

Answer 2

What you are doing will give you something like {"0":"hurry",...,"3":"overview"} when what you want is more like ["hurry",...,"overview"]
What you can do, is create a custom converter/serializer, or if you don't need automatic serialization/deserialization in .net, just serialize an object[] array in a class method...
public string AsJson()
{
return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new object[] {
Hurry, Dont_Spam_This_Button, Navigation, Overview
});
}