Parsing JSON data into list of objects - vb.net

Question

I'm new at JSON and i am currently struggling with a problem parsing JSON data in a list of objects.
The data that i am trying to parse is generated by the facebook graph api, and looks like this :
{
"100001621071794": {
"id": "100001621071794",
"name": "TEST1",
"username": "test1",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/test1",
"gender": "male",
"picture": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/test1.jpg"
},
"534237692": {
"id": "534237692",
"name": "TEST2",
"username": "test2",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/test2",
"gender": "female",
"picture": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/test2.jpg"
}
}
I am using the following code to parse :
Dim MyFacebookUsers As List(Of FacebookUser) = MyTwitterSerializer.Deserialize(Of List(Of FacebookUser))(FBData)
The class FacebookUser looks like this :
Public Class FacebookUser
Public id As String
Public name As String
Public username As String
Public link As String
Public gender As String
Public picture As String
End Class
I know that this is not an array, because it is missing '[' and ']'. But when i replace the '{' and '}' with '[' and ']' i'm getting an error because of an invlaid matrix.
Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

You're right, that's not a JSON Array, it's an Object containing FacebookUser Objects where the id value is also the element key.
In .NET the Dictionary class is the JSON Object equivalent, so presumably something like
Dim MyFacebookUsers As List(Of FacebookUser) = MyTwitterSerializer.Deserialize(Of Dictionary(Of FacebookUser))(FBData)
is what you need.
As you discovered, you can't turn it into a Array (list) by just changing the braces. However, if you actually had an Array, it would look like this:
[
{"id": "100001621071794",
"name": "TEST1",
"username": "test1",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/test1",
"gender": "male",
"picture": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/test1.jpg"
},
{"id": "534237692",
"name": "TEST2",
"username": "test2",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/test2",
"gender": "female",
"picture": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/test2.jpg"
}
]
and your code would have worked fine.