Question

I have the following code in an HTML file:

socket.on('message',function(data) {
          console.log('Received a message from the server!',data);
          $('#data').append('<br />'+data.toString('utf8'));
        });

The server at certain points sends a string or sends a JSON object to the client however when I try to use JSON syntax to access the data eg/ $('#data').append(data.people[0].name]) it throws an error saying people is undefined. I know the data being sent is valid. How do I get my function to understand its dealing with JSON?

Answer 1

If your data is coming back as a JSON string, then you probably need to parse it as JSON first. This can be done using the $.parseJSON method like so:

socket.on('message',function(data) {
    var myData = $.parseJSON(data);
    // the remainder of your code
});

You can find more information on $.parseJSON in the JQuery documentation. Also worth noting is that if the browser that your code is running in has a native implementation of JSON.parse, the $.parseJSON method will use it.