From Json.NET documentation: http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json/help/?topic=html/ConvertingJSONandXML.htm
You can force a node to be rendered as an Array by adding the attribute json:Array='true' to the XML node you are converting to JSON. Also, you need to declare the json prefix namespace at the XML header xmlns:json='http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json' or else you will get an XML error stating that the json prefix is not declared.
The next example is provided by the documentation:
xml = @"<person xmlns:json='http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json' id='1'>
<name>Alan</name>
<url>http://www.google.com</url>
<role json:Array='true'>Admin</role>
</person>";
Generated output:
{
"person": {
"@id": "1",
"name": "Alan",
"url": "http://www.google.com",
"role": [
"Admin"
]
}
}
From Json.NET documentation: http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json/help/?topic=html/ConvertingJSONandXML.htm
You can force a node to be rendered as an Array by adding the attribute json:Array='true' to the XML node you are converting to JSON. Also, you need to declare the json prefix namespace at the XML header xmlns:json='http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json' or else you will get an XML error stating that the json prefix is not declared.
The next example is provided by the documentation:
xml = @"<person xmlns:json='http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json' id='1'>
<name>Alan</name>
<url>http://www.google.com</url>
<role json:Array='true'>Admin</role>
</person>";
Generated output:
{
"person": {
"@id": "1",
"name": "Alan",
"url": "http://www.google.com",
"role": [
"Admin"
]
}
}
Giving my +1 to Iván Pérez Gómez and providing some code here to support his answer:
Add the required json.net namespace to the root node:
private static void AddJsonNetRootAttribute(XmlDocument xmlD)
{
XmlAttribute jsonNS = xmlD.CreateAttribute("xmlns", "json", "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/");
jsonNS.Value = "http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json";
xmlD.DocumentElement.SetAttributeNode(jsonNS);
}
And to add json:Array attribute to elements found by xpath:
private static void AddJsonArrayAttributesForXPath(string xpath, XmlDocument doc)
{
var elements = doc.SelectNodes(xpath);
foreach (var element in elements)
{
var el = element as XmlElement;
if (el != null)
{
var jsonArray = doc.CreateAttribute("json", "Array", "http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json");
jsonArray.Value = "true";
el.SetAttributeNode(jsonArray);
}
}
}
Here is a sample of a single child node as a json array:
JSON to XML converting with custom tag, JSON:array attribute is not added
How do you represent a JSON array of strings? - Stack Overflow
What are the differences between using JSON arrays vs JSON objects? - Stack Overflow
Can a JSON file start with an array instead of an object?
Videos
I'll elaborate a bit more on ChrisR awesome answer and bring images from his awesome reference.
A valid JSON always starts with either curly braces { or square brackets [, nothing else.
{ will start an object:
{ "key": value, "another key": value }
Hint: although javascript accepts single quotes
', JSON only takes double ones".
[ will start an array:
[value, value]
Hint: spaces among elements are always ignored by any JSON parser.
And value is an object, array, string, number, bool or null:
So yeah, ["a", "b"] is a perfectly valid JSON, like you could try on the link Manish pointed.
Here are a few extra valid JSON examples, one per block:
{}
[0]
{"__comment": "json doesn't accept comments and you should not be commenting even in this way", "avoid!": "also, never add more than one key per line, like this"}
[{ "why":null} ]
{
"not true": [0, false],
"true": true,
"not null": [0, 1, false, true, {
"obj": null
}, "a string"]
}
Your JSON object in this case is a list. JSON is almost always an object with attributes; a set of one or more key:value pairs, so you most likely see a dictionary:
{ "MyStringArray" : ["somestring1", "somestring2"] }
then you can ask for the value of "MyStringArray" and you would get back a list of two strings, "somestring1" and "somestring2".
The difference between an array and an object is that
Objects are set up using a key and value like:
person.age = 15;
If the key value is a variable, then one could access it like:
var key = "age";
alert(person[key]);
Arrays use an integer[1] index and take a value.
player[1].score += 1000;
[1] Yes, I know, in JavaScript the integer index is really turned into a string behind the scenes. Ignore that. Think of arrays taking an integer value ESPECIALLY when you think of JSON.
Objects- key and value, Arrays- integer. When do you use this or that?
I think of arrays and objects as "is a/an" and "has a" respectively. Lets use "Fruit" as example.
Every item in fruit array is a type of fruit.
array fruit : [orange, mango, banana]
. Arrays can contain objects,strings, numbers, arrays, but lets deal with only objects and arrays.
array fruit : [orange:[], mango:{}, banana:{}]
. You can see that orange is an array too. It implies any item that goes int orange is a type of orange, say: bitter_orange, mandarin, sweet_orange.
for fruit object, any item in it is an attribute of fruit. thus the fruit has a
object fruit :{seed:{}, endocarp:{},flesh:{}}
This also implies that anything within the seed object should be property of seed, say: colour,
It's been my experience that most if not all of them start with a curly brace. I've been looking into json decoding/encoding in Python, and it got me wondering if a json file could start with a square bracket instead.