How Can I Parse Large, Non-Standard JSON Files with Multiple Arrays Efficiently?

Dealing with Incomplete JSON

When parsing large JSON files, it's crucial to consider potential inconsistencies in the data structure. Often, web services return JSON responses that do not conform fully to the standard format. One common issue is the presence of multiple array structures within a single JSON file.

Issue: Non-Standard JSON Structure

In your specific scenario, you encountered this issue where the JSON data contained individual arrays separated by a closing bracket and an opening bracket. This irregular format made it impossible to deserialize the entire JSON as a single array using conventional methods like JsonConvert.DeserializeObject.

Solution: Stream-Based Parsing with Support for Multiple Content

To handle this challenge, you can leverage the flexibility of stream-based parsing in Json.NET. By creating a JsonTextReader and setting its SupportMultipleContent property to true, you enable the reader to treat the JSON as multiple distinct content blocks.

Here's a modified code snippet that demonstrates this approach:

using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
using (Stream stream = client.OpenRead(stringUrl))
using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(stream))
using (JsonTextReader reader = new JsonTextReader(streamReader))
{
    reader.SupportMultipleContent = true;

    var serializer = new JsonSerializer();
    while (reader.Read())
    {
        if (reader.TokenType == JsonToken.StartObject)
        {
            Contact c = serializer.Deserialize<Contact>(reader);
            Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName);
        }
    }
}

This method reads the JSON content stream by stream, parsing each object as a separate entity. When it encounters an opening curly brace, it deserializes a single contact object into your Contact container class and prints the contact information.

The advantage of this approach is that it processes the JSON data incrementally, without attempting to parse the entire file at once. This is particularly beneficial for large JSON files that exceed the available memory capacity.

By utilizing stream-based parsing with support for multiple content, you can effectively handle irregular JSON structures and parse your data efficiently, regardless of its size or complexity.

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