Format the nested property serialized json - json.net

Question

I have a CSV string, and one of it's column value is json serialized.
"Id,Name,Seo\r\n13,SpecialCollections,\"{\"\"SeoUrl\"\":\"\"special-collections\"\",\"\"SeoPageTitle\"\":null,\"\"SeoKeywords\"\":null,\"\"SeoDescription\"\":null}\"\r\n";
I'm using a combination of JSON.NET and ServiceStack.Text to serialize and deserialize my data from json-csv and vice versa.
So, with the above CSVinput, I first convert it to .NET object using ServiceStack.Text helper method
var obj= csvInput.FromCsv<List<dynamic>>();
and that gives me an output in a form of Dictionary<string,string> for each row of csv
1) {[Id, 13]}
2) {[Name, SpecialCollections]}
3) {[Seo, {"SeoUrl":"special-collections","SeoPageTitle":null,"SeoKeywords":null,"SeoDescription":null}]}
Then I serialized the above output with JSON.NET helper method and write in a file which looks like this
var serializedJson = JsonConvert
.SerializeObject(obj, Formatting.Indented);
Result
[
{
"Id": "13",
"Name": "SpecialCollections",
"Seo": "{\"SeoUrl\":\"special-collections\",\"SeoPageTitle\":null,\"SeoKeywords\":null,\"SeoDescription\":null}"
}
]
The issue is with nested property 'Seo', although it's value is serialized json but that is because it is string, JSON.NET treat as a string and doesn't format it. Anyway, I can obtain the below expected result?
Expected Result:
[
{
"Id": "13",
"Name": "SpecialCollections",
"Seo": {
"SeoUrl": "special-collections",
"SeoPageTitle": null,
"SeoKeywords": null,
"SeoDescription": null
}
}
]
Any help on this would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Since your "Seo" value is already a JSON string, you'll need to deserialize it into a temporary object (such as a JObject) then recombine it with the other key-value pairs into a new container and serialize that to get the final result you want. Here is a simple way to do that.
First, create a helper method which can determine whether a string value is JSON or not, and return a JToken from it.
public static JToken ToJToken(string s)
{
if (s == null)
return JValue.CreateNull();
// if the string is already JSON, parse it into a JObject (or JArray)
if ((s.StartsWith("{") && s.EndsWith("}")) || (s.StartsWith("[") && s.EndsWith("]")))
return JToken.Parse(s);
// otherwise create a JValue from the non-JSON string
return JToken.FromObject(s);
}
Then, convert your List<Dictionary<string, string>> into a JArray using the above helper method like this:
JArray ja = new JArray(
obj.Select(
dict => new JObject(
((Dictionary<string, string>)dict).Select(
kvp => new JProperty(kvp.Key, ToJToken(kvp.Value))
)
)
)
);
Now, to get the formatted JSON you can simply call ToString() on the JArray:
string json = ja.ToString();
Fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/VDzGao