Parse JSON array without json.net

Question

I am looking to get each "name" property and "text" property from my json string and add them to their respective lists.

JSON:

{
  "buttons": [
    {
      "name": "btnTest1",
      "text": "Click Me1!"
    },
    {
      "name": "btnTest2",
      "text": "Click Me2!"
    },
    {
      "name": "btnTest3",
      "text": "Click Me3!"
    }
  ],
  "width": 400,
  "height": 300
}

Current code:

List<string> btnName = new List<string>();
List<string> btnText = new List<string>();

public class button
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string text { get; set; }
}

public class Mod
{
    public List<button> buttons { get; set; }
    public int width { get; set; }
    public int height { get; set; }
}

var mod = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<List<Mod>>(json);

            foreach (Mod m in mod)
            {
                foreach (button b in m.buttons)
                {
                    btnName.Add(b.name);
                    btnText.Add(b.text);
                }
            }

But my btnName and btnText lists are not being populated.

I've tried a couple of other different solutions with no luck.

What am I doing wrong?

(the reason I don't want to use JSON.net is this application must be standalone without any dlls)

Answer 1

According to your json it actually represents one single Mod object. That said, the json serializer should be parsing/deserializing a Mod object instead of a list of Mod objects, you should reflect that object structure in your serialisation code as follows...

var mod = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Mod>(json);

foreach (button b in mod.buttons)
{
     btnName.Add(b.name);
     btnText.Add(b.text);
}

Answer 2

You are deserializing this as a List while you have json as one object only. Try this as:

  var mod = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Mod>(json);

Answer 3

Change this

new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<List<Mod>>

to

new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Mod>