How to escape special characters in building a JSON string?

Question

Here is my string

{
    'user': {
        'name': 'abc',
        'fx': {
            'message': {
                'color': 'red'
            },
            'user': {
                'color': 'blue'
            }
        }
    },
    'timestamp': '2013-10-04T08: 10: 41+0100',
    'message': 'I'mABC..',
    'nanotime': '19993363098581330'
}    

Here the message contains single quotation mark, which is same as the quotation used in JSON. What I do is fill up a string from user inputs such as message. So, I need to escape those kind of special scenarios which breaks the code. But other than string replace, is there any way to make them escape but still allow HTML to process them back to the correct message?

Answer 1

A JSON string must be double-quoted, according to the specs, so you don't need to escape '.
If you have to use special character in your JSON string, you can escape it using \ character.

See this list of special character used in JSON :

\b  Backspace (ascii code 08)
\f  Form feed (ascii code 0C)
\n  New line
\r  Carriage return
\t  Tab
\"  Double quote
\\  Backslash character

However, even if it is totally contrary to the spec, the author could use \'.

This is bad because :

• It IS contrary to the specs
• It is no-longer JSON valid string

But it works, as you want it or not.

For new readers, always use a double quotes for your json strings.