javascript - JSON.Parse,'Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token o

Question

(This question already has answers here): question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19239217/json-parse-uncaught-syntaxerror-unexpected-token-o

Answer 1

Without single quotes around it, you are creating an array with two objects inside of it. This is JavaScript's own syntax. When you add the quotes, that object (array+2 objects) is now a string. You can use JSON.parse to convert a string into a JavaScript object. You cannot use JSON.parse to convert a JavaScript object into a JavaScript object.

//String - you can use JSON.parse on it
var jsonStringNoQuotes = '[{"Id":"10","Name":"Matt"},{"Id":"1","Name":"Rock"}]';

//Already a javascript object - you cannot use JSON.parse on it
var jsonStringNoQuotes = [{"Id":"10","Name":"Matt"},{"Id":"1","Name":"Rock"}];

Furthermore, your last example fails because you are adding literal single quote characters to the JSON string. This is illegal. JSON specification states that only double quotes are allowed. If you were to console.log the following...

console.log("'"+[{"Id":"10","Name":"Matt"},{"Id":"1","Name":"Rock"}]+"'");
//Logs:
'[object Object],[object Object]'

You would see that it returns the string representation of the array, which gets converted to a comma separated list, and each list item would be the string representation of an object, which is [object Object]. Remember, associative arrays in javascript are simply objects with each key/value pair being a property/value.

Why does this happen? Because you are starting with a string "'", then you are trying to append the array to it, which requests the string representation of it, then you are appending another string "'".

Please do not confuse JSON with Javascript, as they are entirely different things. JSON is a data format that is humanly readable, and was intended to match the syntax used when creating javascript objects. JSON is a string. Javascript objects are not, and therefor when declared in code are not surrounded in quotes.

See this fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/NrnK5/