Formatting output of Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(dataSet) [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• How do I make my JSON less verbose? 5 answers

I have a DataTable. When it's serialized into JSON with

Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(dataTable)

I get results in the following format:

[
    {
        "CLICK_KEY": 6254523744,
        "WEB_SERVER_KEY": 291,
        "PREV_CLICK_KEY": 0,
        "NEXT_CLICK_KEY": 0,
        "SESSION_KEY": 214981151,
        *more key value pairs*
    },
    {
        "CLICK_KEY": 6254523745,
        "WEB_SERVER_KEY": 291,
        "PREV_CLICK_KEY": 0,
        "NEXT_CLICK_KEY": 0,
        "SESSION_KEY": 214746780
        *more key value pairs*
    },
    *many more objects (for each row)*
]

Since I have many columns and many rows, the resulting JSON is huge. This is mostly because column names are long and keep repeating for each row of data.

Is there a way to change settings of Json.Net so that the resulting JSON string is reduced in size? For instance, by formatting output as:

{
    "NAMES": [
        "CLICK_KEY",
        "WEB_SERVER_KEY",
        "PREV_CLICK_KEY",
        "NEXT_CLICK_KEY",
        "SESSION_KEY",
        *more keys*
    ],
    "VALUES": [
        [6254523744, 291, 0, 0, 214981151, *more values*],
        [6254523745, 291, 0, 0, 214746780, *more values*],
        *many more arrays of values (for each row)*
    ]
}

I will not need to deserialize this back into a table or another object, so a "one-way" solution would work.

Thanks!

Update:
I followed advice from @spender & @TravisJ and transformed my DataTable into another type for which Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject() outputs what I need. Note how I start at DataSet level so if it contains more than one DataTable, it will include each one in the array.

var converted = from x in dataSet.Tables.Cast<DataTable>()
                select new
                {
                  NAMES = x.Columns.Cast<DataColumn>().Select(l => l.Caption),
                  VALUES = x.Rows.Cast<DataRow>().Select(l => l.ItemArray)
                };
string jsonResult = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(converted);

Answer 1

You could just convert the datatable to the format you need using a linq projection:

Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(
 dataTable.Select(
  d => new {
   Names = d.Columns.Select(c => c.ColumnName).ToArray(),
   Values = d.Rows.Select(r => r.ToArray()).ToArray()
  })
);