Ansible.Basic - fix when deserialising a json string of an array (#55691)

* Ansible.Basic - fix when deserialising a json string of an array

* Added changelog fragment

(cherry picked from commit 5228133d742fc35ce9f3ada2d22729b525b2f417)

4 files changed, 36 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/ps-basic-json.yaml b/changelogs/fragments/ps-basic-json.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..d8a6f28359
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/ps-basic-json.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+bugfixes:
+- Ansible.Basic - Fix issue when deserilizing a JSON string that is not a dictionary - https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/55691
diff --git a/lib/ansible/module_utils/csharp/Ansible.Basic.cs b/lib/ansible/module_utils/csharp/Ansible.Basic.cs
index a67f67fb36..6a7d03fdcb 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/module_utils/csharp/Ansible.Basic.cs
+++ b/lib/ansible/module_utils/csharp/Ansible.Basic.cs
@@ -334,7 +334,7 @@ namespace Ansible.Basic
             LogEvent(String.Format("[WARNING] {0}", message), EventLogEntryType.Warning);
         }
 
-        public static Dictionary<string, object> FromJson(string json) { return FromJson<Dictionary<string, object>>(json); }
+        public static object FromJson(string json) { return FromJson<object>(json); }
         public static T FromJson<T>(string json)
         {
 #if CORECLR
@@ -375,7 +375,7 @@ namespace Ansible.Basic
             if (args.Length > 0)
             {
                 string inputJson = File.ReadAllText(args[0]);
-                Dictionary<string, object> rawParams = FromJson(inputJson);
+                Dictionary<string, object> rawParams = FromJson<Dictionary<string, object>>(inputJson);
                 if (!rawParams.ContainsKey("ANSIBLE_MODULE_ARGS"))
                     throw new ArgumentException("Module was unable to get ANSIBLE_MODULE_ARGS value from the argument path json");
                 return (IDictionary)rawParams["ANSIBLE_MODULE_ARGS"];
diff --git a/test/integration/targets/win_csharp_utils/library/ansible_basic_tests.ps1 b/test/integration/targets/win_csharp_utils/library/ansible_basic_tests.ps1
index 81a0156dd0..b5ef52cc46 100644
--- a/test/integration/targets/win_csharp_utils/library/ansible_basic_tests.ps1
+++ b/test/integration/targets/win_csharp_utils/library/ansible_basic_tests.ps1
@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ Function Assert-DictionaryEquals {
 
         if ($actual_value -is [System.Collections.IDictionary]) {
             $actual_value | Assert-DictionaryEquals -Expected $expected_value
-        } elseif ($actual_value -is [System.Collections.ArrayList]) {
+        } elseif ($actual_value -is [System.Collections.ArrayList] -or $actual_value -is [Array]) {
             for ($i = 0; $i -lt $actual_value.Count; $i++) {
                 $actual_entry = $actual_value[$i]
                 $expected_entry = $expected_value[$i]
@@ -2347,6 +2347,23 @@ test_no_log - Invoked with:
         $actual.invocation | Assert-DictionaryEquals -Expected @{module_args = @{}}
         $actual.output | Assert-DictionaryEquals -Expected @{a = "a"; b = "b"}
     }
+
+    "String json array to object" = {
+        $input_json = '["abc", "def"]'
+        $actual = [Ansible.Basic.AnsibleModule]::FromJson($input_json)
+        $actual -is [Array] | Assert-Equals -Expected $true
+        $actual.Length | Assert-Equals -Expected 2
+        $actual[0] | Assert-Equals -Expected "abc"
+        $actual[1] | Assert-Equals -Expected "def"
+    }
+
+    "String json array of dictionaries to object" = {
+        $input_json = '[{"abc":"def"}]'
+        $actual = [Ansible.Basic.AnsibleModule]::FromJson($input_json)
+        $actual -is [Array] | Assert-Equals -Expected $true
+        $actual.Length | Assert-Equals -Expected 1
+        $actual[0] | Assert-DictionaryEquals -Expected @{"abc" = "def"}
+    }
 }
 
 try {
diff --git a/test/integration/targets/win_uri/tasks/main.yml b/test/integration/targets/win_uri/tasks/main.yml
index ca6e4a41b4..3243f1eb21 100644
--- a/test/integration/targets/win_uri/tasks/main.yml
+++ b/test/integration/targets/win_uri/tasks/main.yml
@@ -429,3 +429,17 @@
     that:
     - not request_status_code_comma.changed
     - request_status_code_comma.status_code == 202
+
+# https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/55294
+- name: get json content that is an array
+  win_uri:
+    url: https://{{httpbin_host}}/base64/{{ '[{"abc":"def"}]' | b64encode }}
+    return_content: yes
+  register: content_array
+
+- name: assert content of json array
+  assert:
+    that:
+    - not content_array is changed
+    - content_array.content == '[{"abc":"def"}]'
+    - content_array.json == [{"abc":"def"}]