JSON.net - field is either string or List

Question

I have a situation where the JSON returned from a REST-service returns a list of Movie-objects, all specced out with a ton of information. A couple

Answer 1

You won't be able to serialise directly to an object, but you can do so manually without too much effort. JSON.Net contains LINQ to JSON. First define a method that will always return a list of type T even if the underlying JSON is not an array:

public List getSingleOrArray(JToken token)
{
    if (token.HasValues)
    {
        return token.Select(m => m.ToObject()).ToList();
    }
    else
    {
        return new List { token.ToObject() };
    }
}

Sample usage:

JObject m1 = JObject.Parse(@"{
""title"": ""Movie title"",
""images"": [
    ""http://www.url.com/img_0.jpg"",
    ""http://www.url.com/img_1.jpg""
],
""actors"": [
    ""Steven Berkoff"",
    ""Julie Cox""
],
""directors"": ""Simon Aeby""
}");

JObject m2 = JObject.Parse(@"{
""title"": ""Another movie"",
""images"": ""http://www.url.com/img_1.jpg"",
""actors"": ""actor 1"",
""directors"": [
    ""Justin Bieber"",
    ""Justin Timberlake""
]
}");

IList m1_directors = getSingleOrArray(m1["directors"]);
IList m2_directors = getSingleOrArray(m2["directors"]);

m1_directory is a list with a single element, m2_directors is a list with two elements.