How to Deserialize JSON with Numerically-Named Keys in C#?

Handling JSON with Invalid C# Class Names

The Newtonsoft JSON library can struggle with JSON containing keys that violate C# naming conventions (like keys starting with numbers). Let's examine how to handle JSON like this:

<code class="language-json">{
  "1": {
    "fajr": "04:15",
    "sunrise": "05:42",
    "zuhr": "12:30",
    "asr": "15:53",
    "maghrib": "19:18",
    "isha": "20:40"
  },
  "2": {
    "fajr": "04:15",
    "sunrise": "05:42",
    "zuhr": "12:30",
    "asr": "15:53",
    "maghrib": "19:18",
    "isha": "20:41"
  }
}</code>

Since C# class names can't begin with a number, a direct deserialization won't work. The solution is to deserialize into a dictionary.

Deserialization to a Dictionary

This approach uses a dictionary to store the data, where keys are the numerical identifiers from the JSON and values are C# objects representing the prayer times.

<code class="language-csharp">public class PrayerTimes
{
    public string fajr { get; set; }
    public string sunrise { get; set; }
    public string zuhr { get; set; }
    public string asr { get; set; }
    public string maghrib { get; set; }
    public string isha { get; set; }
}

// ... later in your code ...

string json = @"{""1"":{""fajr"":""04:15"",""sunrise"":""05:42"",""zuhr"":""12:30"",""asr"":""15:53"",""maghrib"":""19:18"",""isha"":""20:40""},""2"":{""fajr"":""04:15"",""sunrise"":""05:42"",""zuhr"":""12:30"",""asr"":""15:53"",""maghrib"":""19:18"",""isha"":""20:41""}}";

var prayerTimesDictionary = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, PrayerTimes>>(json);

// Accessing the data:
foreach (var kvp in prayerTimesDictionary)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Day {kvp.Key}: Fajr - {kvp.Value.fajr}");
    // Access other prayer times similarly...
}</code>

This code defines a PrayerTimes class and then uses JsonConvert.DeserializeObject to parse the JSON into a dictionary where keys are strings (representing the day numbers) and values are PrayerTimes objects. This effectively bypasses the C# naming restrictions.

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