Ruby on Rails JSON.parse unexpected token error

Question

I am trying to parse JSON data in my Rails 3 application with JSON.parse. I keep getting this error:

737: unexpected token at '{\"0\":{\"class\":\"window\",\"text\":\"Testing\",\"style\":\"position: absolute; top: 8px; left: 8px; width: 560px; height: 290px; z-index: 0; \"}

The actual JSON is a lot longer, but it is basically the same.

score 43 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 09 '17 at 02:47

43

Well, we can only answer based on the part of the JSON you showed us, but it has two problems:

All the quote characters (") are escaped; they don't need to be unless they are used in a double-qoted string, which it appears they are not.
You are missing a closing brace (}).

Otherwise it passes based on https://jsonlint.com/.

edited Jun 09 '17 at 02:47

answered Feb 27 '11 at 01:41

Michelle Tilley

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Thank you! The problem was the escaped quotes. This worked: `JSON.parse(content.gsub('\"', '"'))` – Shlomo Zalman Heigh Feb 27 '11 at 01:47
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Escaping is hell: I had the same problem and this helped me. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3066886/json-parse-string-with-quotes – obesechicken13 Mar 09 '14 at 08:53

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 17 '12 at 16:55

14

In my case it was a hidden tab character which showed up only when i pasted it into vim.

answered Jul 17 '12 at 16:55

Pratik Khadloya

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The same in my case. Had some whitespace around the object – Christoffer Aug 08 '12 at 18:34
Ditto. I had some unescaped `\r` characters in a field value. – Illya Moskvin Sep 20 '18 at 19:19

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 19 '18 at 11:37

You can directly use JSON.Parse() in-build method:

content = "[{\"addon_id\":\"1\",\"addon_price\":\"5\"}]"
# OUTPUT at Console => "[{\"addon_id\":\"1\",\"addon_price\":\"5\"}]"

JSON.parse(content.gsub('\"', '"'))
# OUTPUT at Console => [{"addon_id"=>"1", "addon_price"=>"5"}]

Ruby on Rails JSON.parse unexpected token error

3 Answers3

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