Question

How do I turn this…

{ 
  'name': 'John', 
  'surname': 'Smith'
}

…into this?

name=John&surname=Smith

I’m trying to send JSON to a server via AJAX

thank you

Answer 1

Gernerically (i.e. without any JS framework)…

var o = {'name': 'John', 'surname': 'Smith'};
var q = [];

for (p in o) {
  if (o.hasOwnProperty(p)) {
    q.push( encodeURIComponent(p) + "=" + encodeURIComponent(o[p]) );
  }
}

q = q.join("&"); // "name=John&surname=Smith"

As people in comments already noted, this would work for flat, non-nested objects only. For advanced uses, I strongly recommend doing an HTTP post operation and sending the object unmodified as a JSON string.

All JS libraries provide a way to transform an object to JSON, and there are other ways to serialize an object, like Douglas Crockford’s own implementation at http://json.org/js.html.