Error jQuery parseJSON throws Invalid JSON error due to escaped single quote in JSON

Question

I’m making requests to my server using jQuery.post() and my server is returning JSON objects (like { "var": "value", ... }). However, if any of the values contains a single quote (properly escaped like \'), jQuery fails to parse an otherwise valid JSON string. 

Here’s an example of what I mean (done in Chrome’s console):

data = "{ \"status\": \"success\", \"newHtml\": \"Hello \\\'x\" }";
eval("x = " + data); // { newHtml: "Hello 'x", status: "success" }

$.parseJSON(data); // Invalid JSON: { "status": "success", "newHtml": "Hello \'x" }

 Is there no way to properly pass a single quote via JSON?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

Striking a similar issue using CakePHP to output a JavaScript script-block using PHP's native json_encode. $contractorCompanies contains values that have single quotation marks and expected json_encode($contractorCompanies) doesn't escape them because its valid JSON.

<?php $this->Html->scriptBlock("var contractorCompanies = jQuery.parseJSON( '".(json_encode($contractorCompanies)."' );"); ?>

By adding addslashes() around the JSON encoded string you then escape the quotation marks allowing Cake / PHP to echo the correct javascript to the browser. JS errors disappear.

<?php $this->Html->scriptBlock("var contractorCompanies = jQuery.parseJSON( '".addslashes(json_encode($contractorCompanies))."' );"); ?

Hope it is helpfull!