Json isn't Deserializing

I’m using System.Text.Json.

I have the following models:

public  class Contacts
{
    [JsonPropertyName("id")]
    public long Id { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    [JsonPropertyName("paused")]
    public bool Paused { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("type")]
    public string Type { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    [JsonPropertyName("owner")]
    public bool Owner {  get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("notification_targets")]
    public NotificationTargets? NotificationTargets { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("teams")]
    public List<Teams>? Teams { get; set; }
}
public class NotificationTargets
{
    [JsonPropertyName("email")]
    public List<Email>? Email {  get; set; }
}
public class Email
{
    [JsonPropertyName("severity")]
    public string Severity { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    [JsonPropertyName("address")]
    public string Address { get; set; } = string.Empty;
}
public class Teams
{
    [JsonPropertyName("id")]
    public long Id { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName ("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; } = string.Empty;
}

My Json is:

{
    "contacts": [
        {
            "id": 14960844,
            "name": "firstname test",
            "paused": false,
            "type": "user",
            "owner": true,
            "notification_targets": {
                "email": [
                    {
                        "severity": "HIGH",
                        "address": "firstname@test.co.uk"
                    }
                ]
            },
            "teams": [
                {
                    "id": 804736,
                    "name": "Team 1"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The above is stored in a string variable.

And I just call:

var myContacts = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<List<Contacts>>(myJsonString);

and I keep receiving the following error:

System.Text.Json.JsonException: ‘The JSON value could not be converted
to System.Collections.Generic.List`1[VTMShared.Models.Contacts]. Path:
$ | LineNumber: 0 | BytePositionInLine: 1.’

I really cannot see what is wrong with this.

>Solution :

You need to deserialize as the Root and extract the Contacts from the Root instance.

var root = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<Root>(json);
var contacts = root.Contacts;

public class Root
{
    [JsonPropertyName("contacts")]
    public List<Contact> Contacts { get; set; }
}

public  class Contact
{
    [JsonPropertyName("id")]
    public long Id { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("name")]
    public string Name { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    [JsonPropertyName("paused")]
    public bool Paused { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("type")]
    public string Type { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    [JsonPropertyName("owner")]
    public bool Owner {  get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("notification_targets")]
    public NotificationTargets? NotificationTargets { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("teams")]
    public List<Teams>? Teams { get; set; }
}

Without defining the Root class, you can work with JsonDocument:

var root = JsonDocument.Parse(json);
var contacts = root.RootElement.GetProperty("contacts").Deserialize<List<Contact>>();