Question

I have this JSON string

$json_string = qq{{"error" : "User $user doesn't exist."}};

which I construct in a low level way, so to speak.

How do I encode it using the JSON module?

Right now I encode hashes like this

use JSON;
my $json_string;

my $json = JSON->new;
$json = $json->utf8;

my $data;
$data->{users}  = $json->encode(\%user_result);
$data->{owners} = $json->encode(\%owner_result);
$json_string    = to_json($data);

print $cgi->header(-type => "application/json", -charset => "utf-8");
print $json_string;

Answer 1

Ratna is right – you can not encode a simple string (unless you put it in a list or hash)

Here are a couple of variants to encode your string:

use strict;
use warnings;
use JSON;

my $user = "Johnny";

my $json_string = { error_message => qq{{"error" : "User $user doesn't exist."}} } ;
$json_string    = to_json($json_string);
print "$json_string\n";

#i think below is what you are looking for
$json_string = { error => qq{"User $user doesn't exist."} };
$json_string    = to_json($json_string);
print $json_string;