[PATCH] to_json method violates JSON specifications

You can turn on strictly valid JSON by setting

ActiveSupport::JSON.unquote_hash_key_identifiers = false

This will wrap the keys in double quotes.

See [5486] and http://blog.codefront.net/2007/06/20/how-to-get-strictly-valid-json-from-rails/

Could someone please explain why the default for to_json is not (valid) JSON? The linked blog post only states that this is the case and mentions the configuration option, but it'd be interesting to know why non-(valid) JSON is an option, and indeed the default one.

It would make more sense to me to have valid JSON be the default. It'd make more sense still to have to_json only do (valid) JSON, and if there's an additional need for non-JSON Javascript representations, a to_js method could be added. The implementation of to_json could simply be to call to_js(:quoted_keys => true) or equivalent.

I'd be happy to submit a patch, but I don't want to spend time on it until I find out why it's not being done that way already.

Heh I wrote that blog post and I would like to know why it isn't generating valid JSON by default too. Must have been a decision somewhere. Maybe made by one of the Prototype developers?

Anyway, any light on this would be great!

With all the recent changes to add JSON serialization and deserialization support on edge (see #7519 and #7518), I think it's absolutely important that Rails outputs valid JSON by default (not the other way around). Would definitely be imperative for the Rails 2.0 release.

If there's a historical reason for it, can someone shed some light? Worst case is that Rails 2.0 goes out with a big fat JSON warning about the invalid JSON by default ;)

Sorry for the bad links in the last comment. It should be r7519 and r7518.

Emit valid JSON (removes ActiveSupport::JSON.unquote_hash_key_identifiers)

Please ignore valid_json_patch.txt, I attached the wrong file!

On Michael Koziarsk's suggestion here: http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/124797, I've attached a patch that makes Rails emit valid JSON only. I've removed the ActiveSupport::JSON.unquote_hash_key_identifiers option since I'm of a mind that there shouldn't need to be an option to produce invalid JSON but if anyone thinks deprecation is more prudent it's really easy to patch that too.

I've:

• left JSON decoding unchanged (i.e. invalid JSON with unquoted hash keys can still be decoded),
• left reserved words in ActiveSupport::JSON unchanged (small chance its useful in future, but can be removed to no detriment to tests too).

Emit valid JSON (removes ActiveSupport::JSON.unquote_hash_key_identifiers)

Oh and please note that when you run the ActiveRecord tests, 2 of them will fail. These are already failing tests in r7676 w/o my patch (I'll see if I can figure out what broke them). The tests are:

  1) Failure:
test_belongs_to_counter_after_save(BelongsToAssociationsTest) [./test/associations_test.rb:1167]:
<1> expected but was
<0>.

  2) Failure:
test_belongs_to_counter_after_update_attributes(BelongsToAssociationsTest) [./test/associations_test.rb:1176]:
<1> expected but was
<0>.

Patch for ActionPack test to validate against quoted json keys

+1 to valid_json_only.diff

Additionally, added actionpack_test_patch_8762.diff to update tests in ActionPack to validate against quoted json key

Emit valid JSON (removes ActiveSupport::JSON.unquote_hash_key_identifiers) with ActionPack tests (against r7693)

Thanks for that choonkeat, I've merged your patch into valid_json_only.2.diff.

(In [7697]) Fixed JSON encoding to use quoted keys according to the JSON standard (closes #8762) [choonkat/chuyeow]

I'm confused, why are we leaving invalid JSON as the default?

We're not, that's why this ticket has now been closed.