JSON, replace quotes and slashes, but by what?

Question

I have the ungrateful task to build a JSON String in Java, manually, without any framework, just a StringBuilder. I know this is bad, but it is only part of a prototype, I w

Answer 1

If you want to include a literal double quote in a JSON string, you must escape it by preceding it with a backslash \. So your JSON string would have to look like this:

{"key" : " \"Some text WITH quotes\" "}

See json.org for the official JSON syntax.

The forward slash / is not a special character and does not need to be escaped. The backslash \ needs to be escaped with itself: \\.

Beware that in Java source code the \ is also the escape character and " also needs to be escaped, which means that if you use these as a literals in your source code you must escape them again.

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("{\"key\" : \" \\\"Some text WITH quotes\\\" \"");