How format API complex model in c#

Question

Hi All,
I want to write one Post API to store data in database. API Structure should be same as below Json format. The requirement is below.

There is a organization with multiple branch. I want to collect information like organizations, branches, contact information in each branch etc. In branches there may be multiple or no contacts . In this case how i format my API model in asp.net c#

[{
"dataType": "organization",
"organizationData": {
"organizationNPI": "int",
"organizationName": "string",
"organizationTIN": "string",
"website": "string",

	"location": [{  
		"addressLine1": "string",  
		"addressLine2": "string",  
		"city": "string",  
		"state": "string",  
		"contact": [{  
			"firstName": "string",  
			"lastName": "string",  
			"middletName": "string",  
			"email": "string",  
			"phone": "string"  
		}, {  
			"firstName": "string",  
			"lastName": "string",  
			"middletName": "string",  
			"email": "string",  
			"phone": "string"  
		}, {  
			"firstName": "string",  
			"lastName": "string",  
			"middletName": "string",  
			"email": "string",  
			"phone": "string"  
		}]  

	}, {  
		"addressLine1": "string",  
		"addressLine2": "string",  
		"city": "string",  
		"state": "string"  

	}, {  
		"addressLine1": "string",  
		"addressLine2": "string",  
		"city": "string",  
		"state": "string"  

	}],  
	"specialities": {  
		"speciality1": "string",  
		"speciality2": "string"  
	},  
	"languages": {  
		"language1": "string",  
		"language2": "string",  
		"language3": "string"  
	}  

}  

}]

Answer 1

Are you asking for the C# structure to back the JSON you gave? Each curly brace represents a JSON object which maps to a C# class. Square brackets are arrays in JSON so they map to either an array or IEnumerable<T> in C#. Everything else is just simple primitive mappings.

   public class Organization  
   {  
      public string dataType { get; set; }  
      public OrganizationData organizationData { get; set; }  
   }  
     
   public class OrganizationData  
   {  
      public int organizationNPI { get; set; }  
      public string organizationName { get; set; }  
      public string organizationTIN { get; set; }  
      public string website { get; set; }  
      public IEnumerable<Location> location { get; set; }  
     
   }  
     
   public class Location  
   {  
      public string addressLine1 { get; set; }  
      public string addressLine2 { get; set; }  
      public string city { get; set; }  
      public string state { get; set; }  
     
      public IEnumerable<Contact> contact { get; set; }  
   }  
     
   public class Contact  
   {  
      public string firstName { get; set; }  
      public string lastName { get; set; }  
      public string middleName { get; set; }  
      public string email { get; set; }  
      public string phone { get; set; }  
   }  

Note that if this is a REST API then most likely they provide an Open API spec for it. In that case you don't need to generate this stuff by hand. Visual Studio can auto-generate the client and models given an Open API definition. You should go that route instead.

Also, the specialties and languages looks like an open-ended JSON object meaning the field names vary by the data being returned. If that is true then this cannot be directly done as properties on a class. However if literally the field names are language1, language2 then you can follow the pattern I showed where specialty and language are classes with the given properties. Then add a property of each of these types to the Location(??) type if that is what they relate to.

Answer 2

typically json mapped objects are converted to dictionaries:

 public Dictionary<string, string> specialities {get; set;}   
 public Dictionary<string, string> languages {get; set;}   
   

Answer 3

Hi @Binumon George , I think you are trying to deserialize complex JSON objects using C#. You can try newtonsoft.json package. You can refer to the code below:

// use like
var rootObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(jsonResponse);
foreach (var row in rootObj.rows)
{
    foreach (var element in row.elements)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(element.distance.text);
    }
}

// you might want to change the property names to .Net conventions
// use [JsonProperty] to let the serializer know the JSON names where needed
public class Distance
{
    public string text { get; set; }
    public int value { get; set; }
}

public class Duration
{
    public string text { get; set; }
    public int value { get; set; }
}

public class Element
{
    public Distance distance { get; set; }
    public Duration duration { get; set; }
    public string status { get; set; }
}

public class Row
{
    public List<Element> elements { get; set; }
}

public class RootObject
{
    public List<string> destination_addresses { get; set; }
    public List<string> origin_addresses { get; set; }
    public List<Row> rows { get; set; }
    public string status { get; set; }
}

You can also use dictionaries. For example:

public class Rootobject
    {
        public Dictionary<string, DataObject> data { get; set; }
        public string type { get; set; }
        public string version { get; set; }
    }
    public class DataObject
    {
        public int id { get; set; }
        public string key { get; set; }
        public string name { get; set; }
        public string title { get; set; }
    }
   var obj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Rootobject>(jsonResponse);

Best regards, Lan Huang

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