JContainer, JObject, JToken and Linq confusion

You don't really need to worry about JContainer in most cases. It is there to help organize and structure LINQ-to-JSON into well-factored code.

The JToken hierarchy looks like this:

JToken             - abstract base class        JContainer      - abstract base class of JTokens that can contain other JTokens       JArray      - represents a JSON array (contains an ordered list of JTokens)       JObject     - represents a JSON object (contains a collection of JProperties)       JProperty   - represents a JSON property (a name/JToken pair inside a JObject)   JValue          - represents a primitive JSON value (string, number, boolean, null)

So you see, a JObject is a JContainer, which is a JToken.

Here's the basic rule of thumb:

• If you know you have an object (denoted by curly braces { and } in JSON), use JObject
• If you know you have an array or list (denoted by square brackets [ and ]), use JArray
• If you know you have a primitive value, use JValue
• If you don't know what kind of token you have, or want to be able to handle any of the above in a general way, use JToken. You can then check its Type property to determine what kind of token it is and cast it appropriately.

JContainer is a base class for JSON elements that have child items. JObject, JArray, JProperty and JConstructor all inherit from it.

For example, the following code:

(JObject)JsonConvert.DeserializeObject("[1, 2, 3]")

Would throw an InvalidCastException, but if you cast it to a JContainer, it would be fine.

Regarding your original question, if you know you have a JSON object at the top level, you can just use:

var jsonWork = JObject.Parse(json);var jsonObject1 = jsonWork["Object1"];

Most examples have simple json and I've googled "C# Newtonsoft parse JSON" more than once.

Here's a bit of a json file I was just asked to parse for a csv. The company name value is nested within many arrays / objects so it is semi-complicated in that regard.

{  "page": {    "page": 1,    "pageSize": 250  },  "dataRows": [    {      "columnValues": {        "companyName": [          {            "name": "My Awesome Company",          }        ]      }    }  ]}

            var jsonFilePath = @"C:\data.json";            var jsonStr = File.ReadAllText(jsonFilePath);            // JObject implementation for getting dataRows JArray - in this case I find it simpler and more readable to use a dynamic cast (below)            //JObject jsonObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JObject>(jsonStr);            //var dataRows = (JArray)jsonObj["dataRows"];            var dataRows = ((dynamic)JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(jsonStr)).dataRows;            var csvLines = new List<string>();            for (var i = 0; i < dataRows.Count; i++)            {                var name = dataRows[i]["columnValues"]["companyName"][0]["name"].ToString();                // dynamic casting implemntation to get name - in this case, using JObject indexing (above) seems easier                //var name2 = ((dynamic)((dynamic)((dynamic)dataRows[i]).columnValues).companyName[0]).name.ToString();                csvLines.Add(name);            }            File.WriteAllLines($@"C:\data_{DateTime.Now.Ticks}.csv", csvLines);