How to escape special characters in building a JSON string?

Question

Here is my string

{
    \'user\': {
        \'name\': \'abc\',
        \'fx\': {
            \'message\': {
                \'color\': \'red\'
            }         


        

Answer 1

Using template literals...

var json = `{"1440167924916":{"id":1440167924916,"type":"text","content":"It's a test!"}}`;

Answer 2

Use encodeURIComponent() to encode the string.

Eg. var product_list = encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(product_list));

You don't need to decode it since the web server automatically do the same.

Answer 3

To allow single quotes within doubule quoted string for the purpose of json, you double the single quote. {"X": "What's the question"} ==> {"X": "What''s the question"}

https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/69266/json-conversion-to-single-quotes

The \' sequence is invalid.

Answer 4

Most of these answers either does not answer the question or is unnecessarily long in the explanation.

OK so JSON only uses double quotation marks, we get that!

I was trying to use JQuery AJAX to post JSON data to server and then later return that same information. The best solution to the posted question I found was to use:

var d = {
    name: 'whatever',
    address: 'whatever',
    DOB: '01/01/2001'
}
$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: 'some/url',
    dataType: 'json',
    data: JSON.stringify(d),
    ...
}

This will escape the characters for you.

This was also suggested by Mark Amery, Great answer BTW

Hope this helps someone.

Answer 5

regarding AlexB's post:

 \'  Apostrophe or single quote
 \"  Double quote

escaping single quotes is only valid in single quoted json strings
escaping double quotes is only valid in double quoted json strings

example:

'Bart\'s car'       -> valid
'Bart says \"Hi\"'  -> invalid