Add ability to convert BinaryData into a dictionary or a dynamic type

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#113,477 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
csharp
Domain
backend-api-design

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing BinaryData API and the JsonNode workaround described in the issue, then compare the linked Azure extension methods. Done means BinaryData can expose data under a JSON property for conversion to a typed collection, dictionary, or dynamic representation, with the supported API shape established.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

area-System.Memory

There are cases where you are dealing with a BinaryData instance which contains some data following a known JSON schema under a given property, e.g.

{
  "pets": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Buddy",
      "type": "Dog",
      "age": 5
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "Mittens",
      "type": "Cat",
      "age": 3
    }
  ],
  "next": "https://api.example.com/pets?page=2"
}

I want to deserialize everything under "pets" into a List<Pet>. There isn't a simple way to do this with the BinaryData API. In Azure, there is an extension method that allows you converting BinaryData to a dynamic type. There is also another extension method that allows converting to a dictionary of string, object here. Having this ability outside of Azure would be helpful.
Ultimately, I'd like to be able to do this:

List<Pet> pets = binaryData["pets"].ToObjectFromJson<List<Pet>>();

or how it would look with the Azure extension method:

List<Pet> pets = binaryData.ToDynamicFromJson().Pets.ToObjectFromJson<List<Pet>>();

As a workaround, I was able to use JsonNode, but it feels like there is something missing from the BinaryData API:

var node = JsonNode.Parse(page.GetRawResponse().Content.ToString())!;
List<Pet> pets = node["pets"].ToObjectFromJson<List<Pet>>();
Dominant language
C#
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