razor view does allow dynamic casting of property values using system.text.json

[giannik]

Using the new system.text.json seems to not cast to dynamic in razor views , so you cannot access dynamically property values like previously .

See in below image when looping in a razor view over some content items i cannot extract dynamically the ContentItemId Property value like before. is there a way to cast to dynamic like before ?

[Piedone]

Did you try foreach (dynamic faq...?

[giannik]

@Piedone yes i did , same result .

[giannik]

the object is there but cannot access dynamically properties using dot notation : @faq.ContentItemId

[Piedone]

How should this be approached with STJ, @MikeAlhayek @sebastienros?

[gvkries]

I would've expected ContentItems to return JsonDynamicObject or JsonDynamicArray instead of JsonObject. What's the definition of ForTutors?

[giannik]

@gvkries ForTutors is BagPart named 'ForTutors' with a collection of content items.

[gvkries]

Okay, I think this happens because JsonDynamicArray only implements IEnumerable<JsonNode>, which breaks dynamic behavior when using foreach:

OrchardCore/src/OrchardCore/OrchardCore.Abstractions/Json/Dynamic/JsonDynamicArray.cs

Line 14 in 77fa6e0

public class JsonDynamicArray : DynamicObject, IEnumerable<JsonNode?>

[giannik]

@gvkries thanks for the fix.
It partially works .It can read now a property but in the following case (where SubscriptionElements is BagPart) when it tries to read again through the .Content property it sends an error
for example

[gvkries]

Hmm, I'll have a look...

[gvkries]

I think it's not a ContentItem anymore at that point, you have to remove the Content part and access SubscriptionElement directly.

[giannik]

@gvkries I tried removing the .Content part with no luck :

[gvkries]

You can cast that JsonDynamicValue to string.

Was all of this working before with NewtonSoft.Json?

[giannik]

@gvkries yes it was working with newtonsoft.

the issue is that even without .Content it cannot resolve using dot notation.

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[gvkries]

In comparison to Newtonsoft JSON, the primary limitation when using dynamics is the lack of direct value comparison. For instance, a straightforward comparison like if (subscriptionElement.SubscriptionElement.TargetUserProfile.Text == "Trainer") no longer works out of the box. Instead, it necessitates casting to the target type, such as if ((string)subscriptionElement.SubscriptionElement.TargetUserProfile.Text == "Trainer").

Regarding the usage of .Content, it seems improbable that this would have worked with Newtonsoft JSON either. ContentItems is essentially a dynamic JSON object and not a ContentElement, which holds true when using Newtonsoft as well.

[giannik]

yes , you are right about the string comparison :
You need to do :

  if (subscriptionElement.SubscriptionElement.TargetUserProfile.Text.ToString() == "Trainer")  //this works 

  if (subscriptionElement.SubscriptionElement.TargetUserProfile.Text == "Trainer") //this does'nt work 

But what i am finding is that the previous api that did a 1-1 mapping of the json with api now does'nt exist :

for instance in previous api you could get strongly typed access to fields (because subscriptionElement was a contentitem) as so :

var mapsToSubscriptionPlanField = subscriptionElement.Get<ContentPart>("SubscriptionElement")?.Get<ContentPickerField>
/("MapstoSubscriptionPlan");
 if (mapsToSubscriptionPlanField?.ContentItemIds.Length == 1)
              {
                  subscriptionPriceContentItemId = mapsToSubscriptionPlanField?.ContentItemIds[0];   
              }

Now you cannot have this api access , right ? you would have to use stj helpers like json.selectNode(.....) . . correct ?

Please tell me i am wrong ...

[giannik]

@gvkries would it make sence to add an extension method like jsonobject.ToContentItem() to convert to contentitem and then use the same api again ?

[gvkries]

Yes, I think that is missing and we should add support for it back. Not sure if an extension method is enough though, we may need to support this on the dynamic wrappers too.

[gvkries]

I've read through this again, and I think the issue might be due to a change in how you're accessing the content items from the bag part. If you get the ContentItem first, you'll end up with the JSON object itself, which isn't a content item and thus can't be used with Get<> or .Content.

Instead, you need to directly access the shapes by using the .Content property of the Model. This property is a ZoneHolding, allowing you to retrieve the content items contained within the bag part.

So, instead of using:

@foreach(var subscriptionElement in Model.ContentItem.Content.SubscriptionElements.ContentItems)

use:

@foreach(var subscriptionElement in Model.Content.SubscriptionElements.ContentItems)

This will give you a ContentItem.

[gvkries]

Here is an excellent description of the differences I was referring too:
#1448 (comment)

[giannik]

@gvkries thanks. the extension method also solves it too.