Intercept "type" before deserializing

Hi, First off thanks for creating this library it works great!. Recently came across a requirement where a resource could be of any type and we need to deserialize into concrete type based on “type” property

For example we have sample json as

  "data": {
    "type": "products",
    "id": "123456",
    "attributes": {},
    "relationships": {
      "content": {
        "links": {
          "self": "/v1/products/123456/relationships/content",
          "related": "/v1/products/123456/content"
        },
        "data": {
          "type": "contentA",
          "id": "999999"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

content.data.type could be “contentA”, “contentB” and so on.

And have defined below classes to deserialize into

using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
using JsonApiSerializer;
using JsonApiSerializer.JsonApi;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace MyJsonApiSerializer
{
    interface IContent
    {
        string Type { get; }
        string Id { get; }
    }

    class ContentA : IContent
    {
        public string Type { get; } = "contentA";
        public string Id { get; set; }
    }

    class ContentB : IContent
    {
        public string Type { get; } = "contentB";
        public string Id { get; set; }
    }

    class Product
    {
        public string Type { get; } = "products";
        public string Id { get; set; }

        [JsonProperty("content")] public Relationship<IContent> Content { get; set; }
    }

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var thisAssembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
            using (var stream = thisAssembly.GetManifestResourceStream("MyJsonApiSerializer.product.json"))
            {
                using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream))
                {
                    var json = reader.ReadToEnd();
                    var product = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Product>(json, new JsonApiSerializerSettings());
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

What we need is to deserialize the json into Product class but Content propery should get deserialized into Relationship<ContentA> or Relationship<ContentB> as per “type”. Don’t think JsonApiSerializer is smart enough to infer the type and deserialize accordingly but any help on how to extend the current behavior to support this would be appreciated.

[alex-davies]

Thanks for your help in implementing this. I have made a few tweaks to the PR and the feature has been added to 1.4.0

Feel free to reopen issue if you are having issues

[alastairtree]

Looks great, thank you.