Question

I’ve been able to find a zillion libraries for generating JSON in Classic ASP (VBScript) but I haven’t been to find ANY for parsing.

I want something that I can pass a JSON string and get back a VBScript object of some sort (Array, Scripting.Dictionary, etc)

Can anyone recommend a library for parsing JSON in Classic ASP?

Answer 1

Keep in mind that Classic ASP includes JScript as well as VBScript. Interestingly, you can parse JSON using JScript and use the resulting objects directly in VBScript.

Therefore, it is possible to use the canonical https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js/blob/master/json2.js in server-side code with zero modifications.

Of course, if your JSON includes any arrays, these will remain JScript arrays when parsing is complete. You can access the contents of the JScript array from VBScript using dot notation.

<%@Language="VBScript" %>
<%
Option Explicit
%>

<script language="JScript" runat="server" src='path/to/json2.js'></script>

<%

Dim myJSON
myJSON = Request.Form("myJSON") // "[ 1, 2, 3 ]"
Set myJSON = JSON.parse(myJSON) // [1,2,3]
Response.Write(myJSON)          // 1,2,3
Response.Write(myJSON.[0])      // 1
Response.Write(myJSON.[1])      // 2
Response.Write(myJSON.[2])      // 3
%>