Explaining the functionality of JSON.parse() and the role of escape characters in JavaScript

Let's say I have an object variable:

var obj = {
    key: '\"Hello World\"'
}

I then attempted to convert it to a string using JSON.stringify in the Chrome devtools console:

JSON.stringify(obj) // "{"key":"\"Hello World\""}"

The result was "{"key":"\"Hello World\""}". Next, I assigned this as a string:

var str = '{"key":"\"Hello World\""}'

After that, I tried to convert it back to an object:

JSON.parse(str);

However, I encountered an error message saying Uncaught SyntaxError

I am confused as to why this is happening. I extracted the string from the original object and simply want to revert it back.

How can I resolve this issue? If my goal is to convert the object to a string and then return it back to its original form, what should I do?

Answer №1

Attempting to convert your JSON into a string literal by enclosing it in single quotes ' can cause issues because backslash \ characters have special significance within JavaScript strings and are automatically converted by the parser to double quotes ". To avoid this problem, make sure to escape the backslashes as well.

For example:

var str = '{"key":"\\"Hello World\\""}'

It's generally recommended not to embed JSON within JavaScript string literals if you plan on parsing it using JSON.parse later on. Since JSON is a subset of JavaScript, it's best to utilize it directly like this:

var result = {"key":"\"Hello World\""};

Answer №2

Attempt this:

let message = '{"text":"\\"Greetings Universe\\""}';

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