Develop Reference

Javascript equivalent to Ruby's single quotes? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Does JavaScript have literal strings?
(6 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
In Ruby, if you use single quotes to make a string, the program parses it so that the output is literally what you wrote.
For example, if you create a string the following way:
variable_a = 'my\nname\nis\nOliver\nQueen'
the output of puts variable_a is
>>my\nname\nis\nOliver\nQueen
However, if you instead use double quotes when building the string, like so:
variable_b = "my\nname\nis\nOliver\nQueen"
the output of puts variable_b would be
>>my
>>name
>>is
>>Oliver
>>Queen
I am looking for a way in Javascript that does just what the single quotes do in Ruby, so that there will be less mistakes when trying to properly build a string that contains backslashes, and other characters that would 'break' the intended string.

Single and double quotes in Javascript are equivalent. The only real reason to use one over the other is preference, and avoiding escaping embedded quotes, e.g.
"Don't need to escape this apostrophe."
or
'No need to escape this "quoted" word.'
Unless you are talking about JSON. In JSON you must use double quotes or it is considered a syntax error by many parsers.

Error Parsing JSON with escaped quotes

I am getting the following json object when I call the URL from Browser which I expect no data in it.
"{\"data\":[], \"SkipToken\":\"\", \"top\":\"\"}"
However, when I tried to call it in javascript it gives me error Parsing Json message
dspservice.callService(URL, "GET", "", function (data) {
var dataList = JSON.parse(data);
)};
This code was working before I have no idea why all of a sudden stopped working and throwing me error.

You say the server is returning the JSON (omitting the enclosing quotes):
{\"data\":[], \"SkipToken\":\"\", \"top\":\"\"}
This is invalid JSON. The quote marks in JSON surrounding strings and property names should not be preceded by a backslash. The backslash in JSON is strictly for inserting double quote marks inside a string. (It can also be used to escape other characters inside strings, but that is not relevant here.)
Correct JSON would be:
{"data":[], "SkipToken":"", "top":""}
If your server returned this, it would parse correctly.
The confusion here, and the reports by other posters that it seems like your string should work, lies in the fact that in a simple-minded test, where I type this string into the console:
var x = "{\"data\":[], \"SkipToken\":\"\", \"top\":\"\"}";
the JavaScript string literal escaping mechanism, which is entirely distinct from the use of escapes in JSON, results in a string with the value
{"data":[], "SkipToken":"", "top":""}
which of course JSON.parse can handle just fine. But Javascript string escaping applies to string literals in source code, not to things coming down from the server.
To fix the server's incorrectly-escaped JSON, you have two possibilities. One is to tell the server guys they don't need to (and must not) put backslashes before quote marks (except for quote marks inside strings). Then everything will work.
The other approach is to undo the escaping yourself before handing it off to JSON.parse. A first cut at this would be a simple regexp such as
data.replace(/\\"/g, '"')
as in
var dataList = JSON.parse(data.replace(/\\"/g, '"')
It might need additional tweaking depending on how the server guys are escaping quotes inside strings; are they sending \"\\"\", or possibly \"\\\"\"?
I cannot explain why this code that was working suddenly stopped working. My best guess is a change on the server side that started escaping the double quotes.

Since there is nothing wrong with the JSON string you gave us, the only other explanation is that the data being passed to your function is something other than what you listed.
To test this hypothesis, run the following code:
dspservice.callService(URL, "GET", "", handler(data));
function handler(data) {
var goodData = "{\"data\":[], \"SkipToken\":\"\", \"top\":\"\"}";
alert(goodData); // display the correct JSON string
var goodDataList = JSON.parse(goodData); // parse good string (should work)
alert(data); // display string in question
var dataList = JSON.parse(data); // try to parse it (should fail)
}
If the goodData JSON string can be parsed with no issues, and data appears to be incorrectly-formatted, then you have the answer to your question.
Place a breakpoint on the first line of the handler function, where goodData is defined. Then step through the code. From what you told me in your comments, it is still crashing during a JSON parse, but I'm willing to wager that it is failing on the second parse and not the first.

Did you mean that your JSON is like this?
"{\"data\":[], \"SkipToken\":\"\", \"top\":\"\"}"
Then data in your callback would be like this:
'"{\"data\":[], \"SkipToken\":\"\", \"top\":\"\"}"'
Because data is the fetched text content string.
You don't have to add extra quotes in your JSON:
{"data":[], "SkipToken":"", "top":""}

JSON.parse failing on valid Json. Have escaped control characters.If

I've escaped control characters and am feeding my validated JSON into JSON.parse and jQuery.parseJSON. Both are giving the same result.
Getting error message "Unexpected token $":
$(function(){
try{
$.parseJSON('"\\\\\"$\\\\\"#,##0"');
} catch (exception) {
alert(exception.message);
}
});
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
Thanks for checking out this issue.

What's happening here is that there are two levels of backslash removal being applied to the string. The first is done by the browser's JavaScript engine when it parses the single-quoted string. In JavaScript, single-quoted strings and double-quoted strings are exactly equivalent (other than the fact that single-quotes must be backslash-escaped in single-quoted strings and double-quotes must be backslash-escaped in double-quoted strings); both types of strings take backslash escape codes such as \\ for backslash, \' for single-quote (redundant but accepted in double-quoted strings), and \" for double-quote (redundant but accepted in single-quoted strings).
In your JavaScript single-quoted string literal you have several instances of this kind of thing, which are meant to be valid JSON double-quoted strings:
"\\\\\"$\\\\\"#,##0"
After the browser has parsed it, the string contains exactly the following characters (including the outer double-quotes, which are unremoved because they are contained in a single-quoted string):
"\\"$\\"#,##0"
You can see that each consecutive pair of backslashes became a single literal backslash, and the two cases of an odd backslash followed by a double-quote each became a literal double-quote.
That is the text that is being passed as an argument to $.parseJSON, which is when the second level of backslash removal occurs. During JSON parsing of the above text, the leading double-quote signifies the start of a JSON string literal, then the pair of backslashes is interpreted as a single literal backslash, and then the immediately following double-quote terminates the JSON string literal. The stuff that follows (dollar, backslash, backslash, etc.) is invalid JSON syntax.
The problem is that you've embedded valid JSON in a JavaScript single-quoted string literal, which, although it happens to be valid JavaScript syntax by fluke (it wouldn't have been if the JSON contained single-quotes, or if you'd tried using double-quotes to delimit the JavaScript string literal), no longer contains valid JSON after being parsed by the browser's JavaScript engine.
To solve the problem, you have to either manually escape the JSON content to be properly embedded in a JavaScript string literal, or load it independently of the JavaScript source, e.g. from a flat file.
Here's a demonstration of how to solve the problem using your latest example code:
$(function() {
try {
alert($.parseJSON('{"key":"\\\\\\\\\\"$\\\\\\\\\\"#,##0"}').key); // works
alert($.parseJSON('{"key":"\\\\\"$\\\\\"#,##0"}').key); // doesn't work
} catch (exception) {
alert(exception.message);
}
});
http://jsfiddle.net/814uw638/2/
Since JavaScript has a simple escaping scheme (e.g. see http://blogs.learnnowonline.com/2012/07/19/escape-sequences-in-string-literals-using-javascript/), it's actually pretty easy to solve this problem in the general case. You just have to decide in advance how you're going to quote the string in JavaScript (single-quotes are a good idea, because strings in JSON are always double-quoted), and then when you prepare the JavaScript source, just add a backslash before every single-quote and every backslash in the embedded JSON. That should guarantee it will be perfectly valid, regardless of the exact JSON content (provided, of course, that it is valid JSON to begin with).

In your original problem, why do you need to do JSONparse in the first place? You could have easily gotten the object you wanted by just doing
var o = { blah }
by manually removing the single quotes you have around the curly braces rather than doing
$.JSONparse('{blah}')
Is there any reason for evaluating the string first (ie var s = '{blah}' and then doing $.JSONparse(s)) which is what your original code was doing? There shouldn't be a case where this is necessary. Since you mentioned somewhere that the string was produced by JSON.stringify, there shouldn't be a scenario where you need to explicitly store it into a variable (ie copy and paste it and put quotes around it).
The main problem here is the string produced by JSON.stringify, which is properly escaped, has been 'evaluated' once when you manually put braces around it. So the key is to make sure the string doesn't get 'evaluated'
Even if you wanted to pass the stringified variable to database or anything, there is no need to explicitly use quotes. One could do
var s = JSON.stringify(obj);
db.save("myobj",s)
var newObj = JSON.parse(db.load("myobj"))
The string is stored verbatim without getting evaluated, so that when you retrieve it, you would have the exact same string.

Unable to access JSON property with "-" dash [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How can I access object properties containing special characters?
(2 answers)
How do I reference a JavaScript object property with a hyphen in it?
(11 answers)
Closed 3 months ago.
I am unable to retrieve a value from a json object when the string has a dash character:
{
"profile-id":1234, "user_id":6789
}
If I try to reference the parsed jsonObj.profile-id it returns ReferenceError: "id" is not defined but jsonObj.user_id will return 6789
I don't have a way to modify the values being returned by the external api call and trying to parse the returned string in order to remove dashes will ruin urls, etc., that are passed as well. Help?

jsonObj.profile-id is a subtraction expression (i.e. jsonObj.profile - id).
To access a key that contains characters that cannot appear in an identifier, use brackets:
jsonObj["profile-id"]

In addition to this answer, note that in Node.js if you access JSON with the array syntax [] all nested JSON keys should follow that syntax
This is the wrong way
json.first.second.third['comment']
and will will give you the 'undefined' error.
This is the correct way
json['first']['second']['third']['comment']

For ansible, and using hyphen, this worked for me:
- name: free-ud-ssd-space-in-percent
debug:
var: clusterInfo.json.content["free-ud-ssd-space-in-percent"]

For anyone trying to apply the accepted solution to HomeAssistant value templates, you must use single quotes if you are nesting in doubles:
value_template: "{{ value_json['internet-computer'].usd }}"

If you are in Linux, try using the following template to print JSON value which contains dashes '-'
jq '.["value-with-dash"]'
It worked for me.

Why do we need to add parentheses to eval JSON? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Why does JavaScript's eval need parentheses to eval JSON data?
(7 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
Why does the following code needs to add ( and ) for eval?
var strJson = eval("(" + $("#status").val().replace(";","") + ")");
PS: $("#status").val() is returning something like {"10000048":"1","25000175":"2","25000268":"3"};

It depends what the value in that element is (an unknown), wrapping it in () is the safe route to account for possibly of no input being there.
Edit: Now that you've cleared up it's JSON, this isn't valid:
eval('{"10000048":"1","25000175":"2","25000268":"3"}');
But this will result in a valid object being returned:
eval('({"10000048":"1","25000175":"2","25000268":"3"})');
//effectively:
eval('return {"10000048":"1","25000175":"2","25000268":"3"};');
Picture in a JavaScript file:
<script type="text/javascript">
{"10000048":"1","25000175":"2","25000268":"3"}
</script>
This is going to fail, it's just an object declared inline but not proper syntax...the same reason a server has to support JSONP for it to work.
A bit tangential to the question, but since you're including jQuery, you might as well use $.parseJSON() (which will use the native JSON.parse() if available) for this:
var strJson = $.parseJSON($("#status").val().replace(";",""));

eval takes a JavaScript statement or expression, but {...} would be valid as a statement or an expression, and the grammar of JavaScript prefers a statement.
As an expression:
{"10000048":"1","25000175":"2","25000268":"3"}
is an Object with some properties (what you want).
As a statement, it is a block:
{ // begin Block
"10000048": // LabelledStatement (but the quotes are invalid)
"1", // Expression, calculate string "1" then discard it, then
"25000175": // you can't put a label inside an expression
which gives an error.
(JavaScript labels can be used to label a particular statement for use with break/continue. They're a bit pointless and almost never used.)
So by adding the parentheses you resolve the ambiguity. Only an expression can start with (, so the contents are parsed in an expression context, giving an object literal, not a statement context.
Incidentally this is not quite enough to correctly interpret all possible JSON values. Due to an oversight in JSON's design, the characters U+2028 and U+2029, two obscure Unicode line-ending characters, are valid to put unescaped in a JSON string literal, but not in a JavaScript string literal. If you want to be safe, you can escape them, eg:
function parseJSON(s) {
if ('JSON' in window) return JSON.parse(s);
return eval('('+s.replace(/\u2028/g, '\\u2028').replace(/\u2029/g, '\\u2029')+')');
}