I am stuck in an impossible situation. I have a JSON from outer space (there is no way they are going to change it). Here is the JSON
{
user:'180111',
title:'I'm sure E pluribus unum means 'Out of Many, One.' nnhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum.nn'',
date:'2007/01/10 19:48:38',
id:3322121,
previd:112211,
body:'You' can read more here E pluribus unum's. Cheers \*/ :/,
from:112221,
username:mikethunder,
creationdate:2007/01/10 14:04:49
}
It is nowhere near a valid JSON,I said. And their response was emmm! but Javascript can read it without complain:
<html>
<script type=text/javascript>
var obj = {PUT JSON FROM UP THERE HERE};
document.write(obj.title);
document.write(<br />);
document.write(obj.creationdate + + obj.date);
document.write(<br />);
document.write(obj.body);
document.write(<br />);
</script>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Problem
I am supposed to read and parse this string via .NET(4) and it broke 3 out of 14 library mentioned in C# section of Json.org (didn't try rest of them). To make the problem go away, I wrote following function to fix the issue with single and double quotes.
public static string JSONBeautify(string InStr){
bool inSingleQuote = false;
bool inDoubleQuote = false;
bool escaped = false;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(InStr);
sb = sb.Replace(`, <°)))><); // replace all instances of grave accent to fish so we can use that mark later.
// Hopefully there is no fish in our JSON
for (int i = 0; i < sb.Length; i++) {
switch (sb[i]) {
case '\':
if (!escaped)
escaped = true;
else
escaped = false;
break;
case ''':
if (!inSingleQuote && !inDoubleQuote) {
sb[i] = ''; // Change opening single quote string markers to double qoute
inSingleQuote = true;
} else if (inSingleQuote && !escaped) {
sb[i] = ''; // Change closing single quote string markers to double qoute
inSingleQuote = false;
} else if (escaped) {
escaped = false;
}
break;
case '':
if (!inSingleQuote && !inDoubleQuote) {
inDoubleQuote = true; // This is a opening double quote string marker
} else if (inSingleQuote && !escaped) {
sb[i] = '`'; // Change unescaped double qoute to grave accent
} else if (inDoubleQuote && !escaped) {
inDoubleQuote = false; // This is a closing double quote string marker
} else if (escaped) {
escaped = false;
}
break;
default:
escaped = false;
break;
}
}
return sb.ToString()
.Replace(\/, /) // Remove all instances of escaped / (/) .hopefully no smileys in string
.Replace(`, \) // Change all grave accents to escaped double quote
.Replace(<°)))><, `) // change all fishes back to grave accent
.Replace(\','); // change all escaped single quotes to just single quote
}
Now JSONlint only complains about attribute names and I can use both JSON.NET and SimpleJSON libraries to parse above JSON.
Question
I am sure my code is not the best way of fixing mentioned JSON.
Is there any scenario that my code might break? Is there a better way of doing this?
