Question

I’ve just started to learn how to use JSON and this is probably a noob question: ¿why do I have to parse JSON?

I’ve a JSON object that comes from a php array (I’ve used it json_encode) and it looks like this:

var jason = 
{
  "book1": {
    "price": 10,
    "weight": 30
  },
  "book2": {
    "price": 40,
    "weight": 60
  }
};

and I can loop through it using the $.each() function, so why would I parse it? After apllying a parse, I cant use $.each() anymore, dunno why. And I dont understand why I cant use something like this: console(jason.book1[1]);

I know that the description in jquery says:

Description: Takes a well-formed JSON string and returns the resulting JavaScript object.

But I dont really get it. Anyway, any help would be appriciated!

Answer 1

The above is an object in JavaScript (not technically JSON, since JSON is just a notation for representing objects rather than a data structure. It’s pedantic to say that, though):

However, say you had a string like this:

var jason = '{"book1":{"price":10,"weight":30},"book2":{"price":40,"weight":60}}';

You could get that string in a variety of ways, but say you have it.

$.parseJSON(jason) will turn that string into the object you have above.

See? http://jsfiddle.net/7Qvd2/