how to convert a JavaScript literal object into Json object in PHP

Question

I have a JS literal object string such as {name:{first:"George",middle:"William"},surname:"Washington"} and I have to convert it in Json. How can I do it using PHP?

• Sergiu Paraschiv: possible duplicate of How to parse a JSON string using PHP
• Musa: That's kind of strange having a string of a js object literal in php.
• epascarello: possible duplicate of how to decode this JSON string?
• Aristona: This is not a duplicate question. JSON and object literals are not the same thing and json_decode doesn't parse object literal strings.
• RobP: because the key names are not quoted in the JS literal string, this could get ugly. I suspect you'll have to write your own parser similar to the JS runtime interpreter's parser, which is a complex and buggy proposition. Perhaps you can simplify the grammar to accept only a subset of JS object literals, which would make it possible to do the job with a reasonable set of regexps?

Answer 1

If someone is still looking for an easy solution to this, as I did recently, you could check out the PHP library that I wrote: ovidigital/js-object-to-json

1) Install with composer

composer require ovidigital/js-object-to-json

2) Use it inside your project

$json = \OviDigital\JsObjectToJson\JsConverter::convertToJson($javascriptObjectString);

Answer 2

JS:

// Pretend we're POSTing this
var foo = {foo:{first:"George",middle:"William"}};

PHP:

$foo = $_POST['foo'];
$foo = json_decode( stripslashes( $foo ) );
echo $foo->first;

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Credit where credit is due: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pORFYsgOXog

Answer 3

If you are lucky enough to know what the keys will be when they arrive on your script, and you know that they won't appear within the values, you could do this with str_replace() to add double quotes to the keys:

$notQuiteJson = '{name:{first:"George",middle:"William"},surname:"Washington"}';
$initialJson = array('name:','first:','middle:','surname:');
$replacedJson = array('"name":','"first":','"middle":','"surname":');
$convertedDataString = str_replace($initialJson, $replacedJson, $notQuiteJson);
$actualJson = json_decode($convertedDataString);

Far from perfect, but hopefully this helps someone.

• Joeri: I'll take this as an answer. Works for where I need it: get data out of a javascript file.

Answer 4

Not json_encode, use $var = json_decode($_POST['names'], true). You can then use it like echo $var['surname'] to echo "Washington".

• Aristona: This is not a JSON formatted string so your answer doesn't work. This is an object literal in string format, so your solution would actually output null.