javascript - Parsing "relaxed" JSON without eval

Question

What is the easiest method to parse "relaxed" JSON but avoid evil eval?

The following throws an error:

JSON.parse("{muh: 2}");

since proper JSON should have keys quoted: {"muh": 2}

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My use case is a simple test interface I use to write JSON commands to my node server. So far I simply used eval as it's just a test application anyway. However, using JSHint on the whole project keeps bugging me about that eval. So I'd like a safe alternative that still allows relaxed syntax for keys.

PS: I don't want to write a parser myself just for the sake of the test application :-)

Answer 1

You could sanitize the JSON using a regular expression replace:

var badJson = "{muh: 2}";
var correctJson = badJson.replace(/(['"])?([a-z0-9A-Z_]+)(['"])?:/g, '"$2": ');
JSON.parse(correctJson);