JSON parse in ruby failing

Question

In my rails database I have an object with a text field that is valid json:

"\"AACAY, AAOI, AAON, AATI, ABAX,ZYXI\""

If I call JSON.parse on the field in ruby it errors with this:

JSON::ParserError: 784: unexpected token at '"AACAY, AAOI, AAON, AATI, ABAX,ZYXI"'

However, if I call JSON.parse on the same string in the browser it works.

Why is the ruby call failing?

Answer 1

I encounter the same issue with JSON.parse for a string nested in a JSON string. My solution was to escape JSON::ParserError with YAML.

YAML.load("\"AACAY, AAOI, AAON, AATI, ABAX,ZYXI\"")
=> "AACAY, AAOI, AAON, AATI, ABAX,ZYXI"

Beware of gotchas though. See this SO thread

Answer 2

Its a bug in the JSON parser that is fixed as of v2.0 of the json gem.

# json_parser_test.rb
require 'json'
puts JSON.parse("\"AACAY, AAOI, AAON, AATI, ABAX,ZYXI\"")

---

maxcal@MaxBook ~/p/s/tmp> gem list json

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

json (1.8.3)
json-schema (2.7.0)
jsonapi (0.1.1.beta6)
jsonapi-parser (0.1.1.beta3)
jsonapi-renderer (0.1.1.beta1)
multi_json (1.12.1, 1.11.2)
maxcal@MaxBook ~/p/s/tmp> ruby json_parser_test.rb 
/Users/maxcal/.rbenv/versions/2.3.1/lib/ruby/2.3.0/json/common.rb:156:in `parse': 784: unexpected token at '"AACAY, AAOI, AAON, AATI, ABAX,ZYXI"' (JSON::ParserError)
    from /Users/maxcal/.rbenv/versions/2.3.1/lib/ruby/2.3.0/json/common.rb:156:in `parse'
    from json_parser_test.rb:2:in `<main>'

Upgrading the JSON gem makes the parser error disappear:

maxcal@MaxBook ~/p/s/tmp> gem install json -v 2.0
Fetching: json-2.0.0.gem (100%)
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed json-2.0.0
Building YARD (yri) index for json-2.0.0...
Done installing documentation for json after 2 seconds
1 gem installed
maxcal@MaxBook ~/p/s/tmp> ruby json_parser_test.rb 
AACAY, AAOI, AAON, AATI, ABAX,ZYXI

Answer 3

JSON.parse() does not work with all string formats. String needs to have following format. "{\"AACAY\":\"AAOI\", \"AAON\":\"AATI\", \"ABAX\":\"ZYXI\"}" which contains stringified object.