👀 Views: 0 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-12

json deserialization dotnet-7 csharp

I'm following best practices but I'm confused about I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help... I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm currently working on a .NET 7 application where I'm trying to deserialize a complex JSON object into a C# class using `System.Text.Json.JsonSerializer`. However, I'm working with the behavior `JsonException: The JSON value could not be converted to MyNamespace.MyClass. Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: <. Path: $.data.` This behavior occurs when the JSON response contains an unexpected structure that I believe is coming from an API I'm consuming. Here's the relevant part of my C# model class: ```csharp public class MyClass { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public List<string> Tags { get; set; } } ``` And here is the code I’m using to call the API and deserialize the response: ```csharp using System.Net.Http; using System.Text.Json; public async Task<MyClass> GetMyClassAsync(string url) { using var httpClient = new HttpClient(); var response = await httpClient.GetStringAsync(url); return JsonSerializer.Deserialize<MyClass>(response); } ``` I initially assumed that the API returns a JSON object that matches my model, but I didn't expect the structure might be different. I've tried inspecting the raw response and it appears there's an HTML behavior page being returned instead of the expected JSON, which might be causing the unexpected token behavior. I’ve also set the `JsonSerializerOptions` to allow for property name casing to be ignored, but that doesn’t seem to address the core scenario. Here’s how I configured the options: ```csharp var options = new JsonSerializerOptions { PropertyNamingPolicy = JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase, IgnoreNullValues = true }; return JsonSerializer.Deserialize<MyClass>(response, options); ``` Is there a way I can handle this scenario better, possibly by validating the response content type before attempting to deserialize? Or should I consider using a different approach to handle cases when the returned data is not in JSON format? For context: I'm using Csharp on macOS. Thanks in advance! For context: I'm using Csharp on Ubuntu. I've been using Csharp for about a year now. I'd be grateful for any help. How would you solve this?