Question

I have a callback function within an ASP.NET Web Forms application which I am trying to return some handy JSON to so that the javascript function manage the data. I am able to send back a string of JSON that contains all of my data, but now I am trying to get the following structure:

{
 data: dataGoesHere
 function: function(){alert('hello');}
}

jQuery.parseJSON works great for the simple case of a string being returned like this:

"{\"data\" : \"dataGoesHere\"}"

but soon as you try to do something like this

"{
   \"data\" : \"dataGoesHere\"
   \"function" function(){alert('hello');}
}"

jQuery throws an exception. I am wondering if it is possible to create a string so that jQuery can parse into JSON that will include a function reference that I can call later.

I hope this makes sense. Thank you for your time and responses!

Answer 1

That’s not valid JSON.
It’s rejected by jQuery for security reasons, in order to prevent exactly what you’re trying to do.

Instead, you can just call eval, to interpret it as a Javascript literal.
Note that you’ll need to wrap it in parentheses to make sure that it’s parsed as an expression and not a block.