Quotes are escaped when passing JSON as a POST variable

Question

I'm doing an Ajax call to my server and need to send an array. I'm encoding the array using JSON. That results in this data sent to the server using a POST request:

selection=%5B%221%22%5D

On the server, I have this code:

echo urldecode($_REQUEST['selection']);

This results in:

[\"1\"]

Note that there are no backslashes in the request. I checked that with Firefox's dev tools.

Where were the backslashes added? Am I doing something wrong here? I can't decode the string like this.

This is the client-side code:

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "<my-uri>/rule/add.php",
    data: {
        selection: JSON.stringify(["1"]) // in reality this is a variable array
    }
}).done(function(data){
    alert(data);
});

backslashes are used to escape the double quotes. A simple replace would probably work for you. — Th0rndike, Jun 03 '13 at 13:28
@Th0rndike yeah, I know, but I can't see where they're added. It might indicate a problem in the code. Does it, or is this normal behaviour? — , Jun 03 '13 at 13:28
Why not send it as JSON rather than FOTM data which you need to manually deserialize? — Phill, Jun 03 '13 at 13:28
@Phill I try to send is as JSON, I'm using `JSON.stringify();` - or do you mean something else? — , Jun 03 '13 at 13:30
You're sending FORM data with a single key with the serialized JSON. Just do `data: JSON.stringify(["1"])` and deserialize the body. — Phill, Jun 03 '13 at 13:32

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 03 '13 at 14:00

0

This happens because your server is configured to add slashes to quotes.

If you wish to avoid this go to your php.ini and set magic_quotes_gpc to 0.

answered Jun 03 '13 at 14:00

Goran Lepur

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Quotes are escaped when passing JSON as a POST variable

1 Answers1