How to remove \"

Question

String (JSON): {"title":"\"Copper\""}

I have tried

$output = str_replace('\\"', "", $output);

but I got

{"title":""      Copper""}

What I expect

{"title":"Copper"}

your input is valid JSON. Instead of trying to parse it yourself via regexp or so, simply use [`json_decode`](http://php.net/json_decode). — phihag, Nov 25 '12 at 22:52
@Eritrea: An empty string is not "null". (Just for future reference.) — Luke Stevenson, Nov 25 '12 at 22:54
You should fix the title either before you json_encode it; or after you've decoded it again. It makes little sense to try to fix this in the string, and there's a high risk of error. — Evert, Nov 25 '12 at 22:57
A place to fiddle with it: http://3v4l.org/J49hK. It looks like you should get what you expect. — Desmond Hume, Nov 25 '12 at 22:58
@Eritrea: "An empty string". "NULL" has a special meaning in PHP. See http://3v4l.org/IMKWM — Luke Stevenson, Nov 25 '12 at 23:09
Then in what case is null used to define in PHP? aside from database fields — samayo, Nov 25 '12 at 23:17
@phihag +1 for json_decode. Don't fiddle with a json string in PHP without decoding it. This way be demons. — Samantha P, Nov 25 '12 at 23:22
@Eritrea: See http://stackoverflow.com/a/138954/332565 for a start. — Luke Stevenson, Nov 25 '12 at 23:52

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 25 '12 at 22:58

Your example code is incomplete, because what you have given does work:

php > $s='{"title":"\"Copper\""}';
php > echo $s;
{"title":"\"Copper\""}
php > echo str_replace('\\"',"",$s);
{"title":"Copper"}

(that is from a php -a interactive session)

In other words, your input data is not what you think it is.

BTW, as others have said, it would be better to use json_decode on the JSON. Then do string manipulations on just the field of interest. Then use json_encode to turn it back in JSON. Using str_replace or regexes may work for simple cases, but as soon as you get unexpected data it can go horribly wrong.

You right. I had an error in another part of code that It was screwing up the entire code. — sparkle, Nov 25 '12 at 23:07

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 25 '12 at 22:52

Are you generating the JSON string with your own code (as opposed to getting it from a third-party)? If so, post the code which generates the JSON string and detail what you have done to this point to try and resolve the problem.

If you don't have control over the JSON string (and/or the creator of the JSON string will not/cannot fix it), then a hacky way to fix it would be:

$output = str_replace( '\"' , '' , $output );

How to remove \"

2 Answers2