Question

My system runs some MySQL queries in PHP to retrieve data. The data that is retrieved is structured in an array similar to below:

$ret = array(
    "name" => "John Doe",
    "location" => "Antarctica",
    "description" => "Height < 200"
);

I return this through AJAX via:

echo json_encode($ret);

The AJAX error event is fired and upon inspection of the returned data (jqXHR.responseText) via Chrome console, I’m noticing:

"description" : "Height \x3c 200"

which is throwing a parse error.

I know that \x3c is the hex representation of “<” and apparently, that form renders the JSON invalid. I can’t seem to find a way to make it such that I’m able to pass the angled bracket via JSON in a valid form. Direct string replace of “\x3c” on the PHP side doesn’t work.

Further, I know that specifying the AJAX return as HTML will work, but I’m passing a set of data hence the use of JSON.

Answer 1

Try this:

echo json_encode( $ret, JSON_HEX_TAG );

Use json_last_error() to debug.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php