Convert JObject into Dictionary. Is it possible?

Question

I have a web API method that accepts an arbitrary json payload into a JObject property. As such I don\'t know what\'s coming but I still need to translate it to

Answer 1

Sounds like a good use case for extension methods - I had something lying around that was pretty straightforward to convert to Json.NET (Thanks NuGet!):

Of course, this is quickly hacked together - you'd want to clean it up, etc.

public static class JTokenExt
{
    public static Dictionary 
         Bagify(this JToken obj, string name = null)
    {
        name = name ?? "obj";
        if(obj is JObject)
        {
            var asBag =
                from prop in (obj as JObject).Properties()
                let propName = prop.Name
                let propValue = prop.Value is JValue 
                    ? new Dictionary()
                        {
                            {prop.Name, prop.Value}
                        } 
                    :  prop.Value.Bagify(prop.Name)
                select new KeyValuePair(propName, propValue);
            return asBag.ToDictionary(kvp => kvp.Key, kvp => kvp.Value);
        }
        if(obj is JArray)
        {
            var vals = (obj as JArray).Values();
            var alldicts = vals
                .SelectMany(val => val.Bagify(name))
                .Select(x => x.Value)
                .ToArray();
            return new Dictionary()
            { 
                {name, (object)alldicts}
            };
        }
        if(obj is JValue)
        {
            return new Dictionary()
            { 
                {name, (obj as JValue)}
            };
        }
        return new Dictionary()
        { 
            {name, null}
        };
    }
}