jQuery.parseJSON()

Categories: Utilities

jQuery.parseJSON( json )Returns: Object

Description: Takes a well-formed JSON string and returns the resulting JavaScript object.

Passing in a malformed JSON string results in a JavaScript exception being thrown. For example, the following are all malformed JSON strings:

  • {test: 1} (test does not have double quotes around it).
  • {'test': 1} ('test' is using single quotes instead of double quotes).

The JSON standard does not permit "control characters" such as a tab or newline. An example like $.parseJSON('{"testing":"1\t2\n3"}') will throw an error in most implementations because the JavaScript parser converts the string's tab and newline escapes into literal tab and newline; doubling the backslashes like "1\\t2\\n3" yields expected results. This problem is often seen when injecting JSON into a JavaScript file from a server-side language such as PHP.

Where the browser provides a native implementation of JSON.parse, jQuery uses it to parse the string. For details on the JSON format, see http://json.org/.

Prior to jQuery 1.9, $.parseJSON returned null instead of throwing an error if it was passed an empty string, null, or undefined, even though those are not valid JSON.

Example:

Parse a JSON string.

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var obj = jQuery.parseJSON('{"name":"John"}');
alert( obj.name === "John" );