Parse Data on runtime into JSON

Question

I have been trying to work out a subscription form for my game and thanks to you guys here, I came to a solution which works but still needs some changes.

The idea is to have an input field in the scene that takes the users email and convert it into JSON (to do a POST request). I have made the post request and everything works fine but I have to manually type the email in the inspector. What I would want is to get that value from the input field!

    public class testing : MonoBehaviour
    {
        public TMP_InputField myField;
        //public InputField field;
        [SerializeField]
        private Email _email = new Email();
        private string URL = "";

        public void SaveData()
        {
            string data = JsonUtility.ToJson(_email); // this part here needs to be like _email.text
            System.IO.File.WriteAllText(Application.persistentDataPath + "Data.json", data);
            StartCoroutine(SaveIntoJson(URL , data));
        }
        IEnumerator SaveIntoJson(string url, string data)
        {
            var request = new UnityWebRequest(url, UnityWebRequest.kHttpVerbPOST);
            request.SetRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");
            var jsonBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
            request.uploadHandler = new UploadHandlerRaw(jsonBytes);
            request.downloadHandler = new DownloadHandlerBuffer();
    
            yield return request.SendWebRequest();
            if (request.isNetworkError || request.isHttpError)
            {
                Debug.Log(request.error);
                Debug.Log(request.downloadHandler.text);
            }
            else
            {
                Debug.Log("Form upload complete!");
            }
            Debug.Log(data);
        }
    }
    [System.Serializable]
    public class Email
    {
        public List<Profiles> profiles = new List<Profiles>();
    }
    [System.Serializable]
    public class Profiles
    {
        [SerializeField]
        public string email; // this part here works but i need to type the email in the inspector
    }

also the requirements for the json are like this

 {"profiles":[{"email":"[email protected]"}]}

Answer 1

JsonUtility.ToJson only works with objects of a class which inherits from MonoBehaviour or ScriptableObject or which has the [Serializable] attribute. So when you want to use it to create a Json message for some external API, then you should build classes with the [Serializable] attribute which mimic the JSON objects that API expects.

When that API exects a format like this:

 {"profiles": [
     {"email":"[email protected]"}, 
     {"email":"[email protected]"} ]
 }`

then you can create two classes like this:

[Serializable]
private class ApiDataProfile {
     public string email;
}
[Serializable]
private class ApiData {
     public ApiDataProfile[] profiles;
}

These classes can be declared within the class which uses them. So you don't necessarily need to create new sourcecode files for them.

You can then create your JSON string by using object and collection initializers:

string data = JsonUtility.ToJson(
      new ApiData { 
         profiles = new ApiDataProfile[] {
             new ApiDataProfile { email = "[email protected]" },
             new ApiDataProfile { email = "[email protected]" }
         }
      }
); 

In some cases the API might expect keys which are not valid C# identifier names. They might start with a number or are reserved C# keywords and thus can not be used as variable names. In that case you can help yourself by using the @ character in front of them:

[Serializable]
private class EmailApiData {
     public string _email;
     public string @for;
     public int @1stLoginTimestamp;
}

public void SaveData() {
    string data = JsonUtility.ToJson(new EmailApiData() { 
         _email = email.text 
         @for = someOtherString
         @1stLoginTimestamp = DateTime.Now
    }); 
    //...
}