Run into this issue while consuming a 3rd party JSON API using JSON.NET.
Complete exception message:
Cannot deserialize the current JSON object (e.g. {"name":"value"}) into type 'System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]' because the type requires a JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) to deserialize correctly.
The json string I was trying to deserialize had a field looking like this:
"extras": {},
In my C# class that field was declared as a List<string>.
By declaring the field as an IDictionary<string, string> instead the problem was solved.
Lesson learned:
- If the json value is '[]' => declare the field as List<type>
- If the json value is '{}' => declare the field IDictionary<type, type>
