Any better way to read Json array

Question

I have a json file - WorkflowNames.json with contents as -

["ImportOrder", "ValidateOrder", "ProcessOrder", "ArchiveOrder"]

My C# code to read this json file is -

private Dictionary<string, bool> GetWorkflowNames()
{
  var appDataFolder = ConfigurationMgr.GetAppPath("App_Data");
  var jsonFilePath = Path.Combine(appDataFolder, "WorkflowNames.json");
  JArray workflowNames = (JArray)JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(System.IO.File.ReadAllText(jsonFilePath));

  var workflowNamesDictionary = new Dictionary<string, bool>();
  foreach (JToken workflowName in workflowNames)
  {
    workflowNamesDictionary.Add(workflowName.ToString(), false);
  }

  return workflowNamesDictionary;
}

My code runs fine. But because this is my first attempt to read data from a json file, I am not sure about these -

1. As a json standard, any data in json file should be represented as key value pair. If I have just an array to read from json file, is it okay to declare as above?
2. Is there any better way, can I improve/simplify above C# code?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Json.Net has support for collections built-in. You should be able to use the generic version of DeserializeObject like this:

private Dictionary<string, bool> GetWorkflowNames()
{
    var appDataFolder = ConfigurationMgr.GetAppPath("App_Data");
    var jsonFilePath = Path.Combine(appDataFolder, "WorkflowNames.json");
    var jsonString = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(jsonFilePath);
    var workflowNames = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<string>>(jsonString);
    return workflowNames.ToDictionary(name => name, _ => false);
}

There are still a few things I would clean up in your code:

Add a using for System.IO and use File without the namespace. You could also use a static using like this using static System.IO.File; and access ReadAllText directly but I generally dislike this unless the class is very focussed and heavily using File.

You'll notice that I introduced a local variable jsonString as I don't like hiding the file access in the call to deserialize the json. I try to stick rigidly to one thing happening per line. Simple and clear code is best when you want to maintain it 2 years later.

I'd also recommend using .ToDictionary as it shortens the code and makes it very obvious what you're doing. Having said that, I would have this return an IEnumerable<string> instead of a dictionary. It's not clear why this returns a dictionary and GetWorkflowNames sounds like it would be perfectly reasonable to return the list.