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safe JSON parsing. How JSON parse can parse UTF characters?

Hello I am wondering why this line doesn't work:
JSON.parse({"a":"\u00A9"})
I tried to serach in MDN website but I didn't find anything referring to in json.parse
Unicode escaping is syntactically legal in js according to this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Lexical_grammar#String_literals
What is the problem and how can I safely parse text with JSON.parse

{"a":"\u00A9"} is a JavaScript object literal.
JSON.parse expects to be passed a string so it is implicitly converted to a string ("[object Object]").
The [ is fine, because a JSON text can start with an array.
The o is then an error because it isn't allowed there.
A literal copyright symbol (remember that \u00A9 inside a JavaScript string literal will be consumed by the JS parser before it gets to the JSON parser) or the unicode escape sequence would be fine.
console.log(JSON.parse('{"a":"\u00A9"}'));
console.log(JSON.parse('{"a":"\\u00A9"}'));
Note that creating a string literal in JS source code that contains JSON and then parsing it is a terrible idea. You have to deal with nested levels of escaping, and it is inefficient.
If you have an object: use the object.
var data = {"a":"\u00A9"};
console.log(data.a);

How to reformat the URL by removing extra slashes

This might be simple and stupid question. But, I'm playing with an API and it returned me the following URL structure:
"https:\/\/s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com\/xxxxx-uploads\/users\/avatar\/fae764d0abea565f8e8524805a3285579568f7f2.jpg"
How can I remove the extra slashed from this string using javascript?

Because it seems that the content you're given is a valid JS or JSON string, you can use JSON.parse() or eval() to convert it from the serialization to actual JS string data without the quotes and escape sequences.
We'll use JSON.parse for safety since you're getting it from an external source.
var s = JSON.parse(url_data);
console.log(s);

JSON Lint says it's valid but JSON.parse throws error

I have simple JSON that I need to parse to object. Strangely it doesn't work even though if I copy and paste my JSON string to JSONLint (http://jsonlint.com/) it will show that it's valid.
var string = '{"token":"9eebcdc435686459c0e0faac854997f3","email":"201403050007950","id":"13","updated_at":"2014-03-05 10:34:51","messageguides":"[{\"name\":\"Un-named Messaging Guide 1\",\"pages\":[\"sustainabilitydirectors\",\"marketingnbusinessdevelopmentdirectors\"],\"date\":1394015692958}]"}';
var obj = JSON.parse(string); // Unexpected token n
console.log(obj);

The \ characters in the data are treated as JSON escape characters when you parse the raw JSON.
When you embed that JSON inside a JavaScript string, they are treated as JavaScript escape characters and not JSON escape characters.
You need to escape them as \\ when you express your JSON as a JavaScript string.
That said, you are usually better off just dropping the JSON in to the JavaScript as an object (or array) literal instead of embedding it in a string and then parsing it as a separate step.
var obj = {"token":"9eebcdc435686459c0e0faac854997f3","email":"201403050007950","id":"13","updated_at":"2014-03-05 10:34:51","messageguides":"[{\"name\":\"Un-named Messaging Guide 1\",\"pages\":[\"sustainabilitydirectors\",\"marketingnbusinessdevelopmentdirectors\"],\"date\":1394015692958}]"};

How to parse Json with jquery having special chars in it?

I got a json structure somehow as below and my question is how can i parse this with jQuery so that i can use it like myJson[0].name and than alert it so that "M\\xe9t\\xe9o" = Météo.
Jquery tells me this is invalid json why ?
Json uses double backslash if i use single backslash ("M\xe9t\xe9o") Jquery is OK with the syntax.
var jsonObj = '{"title":[{"id":"1","name": "M\\xe9t\\xe9o"},{"id":"2","name": "Meteo"}]}';
var myJson = jQuery.parseJSON(jsonObj);

The JSON syntax only allows \uxxxx escapes.
Change it to "M\\u00e9t\\u00e9o".
If you use a single backslash, it gets parsed by the Javascript string literal, so the actual string value contains the real Unicode character, not an escape. In other words, "M\xe9t\xe9o" === "Météo"

It is looks like the json was incorrectly (manually?) encoded. When you encode it in UTF-8, e.g. with PHP, you'll get:
{"title":[{"id":"1","name": "M\u00e9t\u00e9o"},{"id":"2","name": "Meteo"}]}
which is correctly parsed by JS. But \xe9 is unrecognized by parser.

How to use a JSON literal string?

Since the JSON format specifies that single quotes should not be escaped, most libraries (or even the native JSON parser) will fail if you have an escaped single quote in it. Now this usually is not a problem since most of the time you do an XHR that fetches some data formatted as JSON and you use the responseText which contains your JSON string that you can then parse, etc.
In this particular situation, I have a JSON string stored in a database as text... so the database contains something like {"property":"value"} and I want to output this as part of an HTML page created by the server so that the JavaScript code in that page looks something like this:
var x = '{"property":"value"}';
Now if the JSON string in the database contains a single quote like this:
{"property":"val'ue"}
Then I need to escape it or else I will never be able to use it as a string:
console.clear();
var obj = {prop:"val'ue"};
var str = JSON.stringify(obj);
console.log("JSON string is %s",str);
console.dir(JSON.parse(str)); //No problem here
//This obviously can't work since the string is closed and it causes an invalid script
//console.dir(JSON.parse('{prop:"val'ue"}'));
//so I need to escape it to use a literal JSON string
console.dir(JSON.parse('{"prop":"val\'ue"}'));
The question then is why {"prop":"val\'ue"} not considered a valid JSON string ?

In JavaScript - the string '{"prop":"val\'ue"}' is a correct way to encode the JSON as a string literal.
As the JavaScript interpreter reads the single-quoted string, it will convert the \' to '. The value of the string is {"prop":"val'ue"} which is valid JSON.
In order to create the invalid JSON string, you would have to write '{"prop":"val\\\'ue"}'
If I understand the question right, you are trying to generate JavaScript code that will set some variable to the decoded version of a JSON string you have stored in the database. So now you are encoding the string again, as the way to get this string into JavaScript is to use a string literal, passing it through JSON.parse(). You can probably rely on using the server side JSON encoder to encode the JSON string as a JavaScript string literal. For instance:
<?php $jsonString = '{"prop":"val\'ue"}'; ?>
var myJson = JSON.parse(<?php echo json_encode($jsonString) ?>);
// Prints out:
// var myJson = JSON.parse("{\"prop\":\"val'ue\"}");
// And results: Object - { prop: "val'ue"}
However, If you are 100% sure the JSON is going to be valid, and don't need the weight of the extra parsing / error checking - you could skip all that extra encoding and just write:
var myJson = <?php echo $jsonString; ?>
Remember, JSON is valid JavaScript syntax for defining objects after all!

According to jsonlint it is valid without escaping the single quote, so this is fine:
{"prop": "val'ue"}
But this is invalid:
{"prop":"val\'ue"}
According to json.org json:
is completely language independent but
uses conventions that are familiar to
programmers of the C-family of
languages, including C, C++, C#, Java,
JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many
others
So it is the language conventions in c-type languages regarding the reverse solidus (\) that means that your example is not valid.

You might try the following, however, it's ugly.
JSON.parse("{\"obj\":\"val'ue\"}");
Or just store the string to a var first. This should not store the literal backslash value and therefore the JSON parser should work.
var str = '{"obj" : "val\'ue"}';
JSON.parse(str);