C# 10 - Intermittent NullReferenceException When Accessing Nested Properties in a JsonDocument
I've been researching this but I'm working on a personal project and I'm working with an intermittent `NullReferenceException` when trying to access nested properties within a `JsonDocument` in my C# 10 application... I am using the `System.Text.Json` library for JSON parsing. My JSON structure sometimes has missing properties, which I thought I handled with checks, but I'm still working with issues. Here’s a simplified version of the JSON I'm dealing with: ```json { "user": { "id": 1, "name": "John Doe", "profile": { "bio": "Software Developer", "social": { "twitter": null } } } } ``` In my code, I'm trying to access the `twitter` property like this: ```csharp using System.Text.Json; var jsonString = /* JSON string from above */; using var jsonDoc = JsonDocument.Parse(jsonString); var twitterHandle = jsonDoc.RootElement.GetProperty("user").GetProperty("profile").GetProperty("social").GetProperty("twitter").GetString(); ``` However, I'm getting a `NullReferenceException` at `GetProperty("twitter")` occasionally. I’ve tried checking if the `social` object itself is null, but it seems that isn’t consistently preventing the behavior. Here’s what I’ve tried so far: - Using `TryGetProperty` instead of `GetProperty` to handle missing properties, but I still encounter the exception. - Checking if `social` is not null before accessing `twitter`, yet the scenario continues. What’s the best approach to safely navigate through nested properties in a `JsonDocument` while avoiding this exception? Am I missing something in my property checks? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! I'm working on a application that needs to handle this. My development environment is Ubuntu 22.04.