al3891 / custompackagereferences Goto Github PK

This is a widespread problem and needs thorough ecosystem-wide correction. :P

I see a lot of this:
Example.

This is incredibly labor-intensive and error-prone. Please consider a surrogate (or rather, POCO 😄) design instead:

[Fact]
public void BetterSerializationTrustMe()
{
	var file = File.ReadAllText(@"C:\path\to\file.txt");
	var definition = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ProjectDefinition>(file);
	foreach (var reference in definition.References)
	{
		// do stuff.
	}
}

class ProjectDefinition
{
	[JsonProperty("dependencies")]
	public References References { get; set; } = new References();
}

[JsonArray("dependencies")]
class References : Collection<PackageReference> {}

class PackageReference
{
	[JsonProperty("name")]
	public string Name { get; set; }

	[JsonProperty("version")]
	public Version Version { get; set; }
}

This is super example code. I did not run this, but made it to get the point across. You will notice there is no linq statement as all of that is handled in JsonConvert.DeserializeObject for you.

This can be made even better by generalizing the surrogates and decoupling JSON.NET-specific attributes (making using of the JsonSerializerSettings) class.

This is why I am so hardup on POCO. As you do not have to dick around for a schema and dive into LINQ land to translate your data to the target constructs in your code. You use one line (JsonConvert.DeserializeObject) and boom! you're done. 😛