[java] Java escape JSON String?

I have the following JSON string that i am sending to a NodeJS server:

String string = "{\"id\":\"" + userID + "\",\"type\":\"" + methoden + "\",\"msg\":\"" + msget + "\", \"name\":\"" + namnet + "\", \"channel\":\"" + activeChatChannel + "\", \"visitorNick\":\"\", \"agentID\":\" " + agentID + "\"}";

PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(os, "utf-8"));
pw.println(string);

The problem becomes when the string msget contains the character " and '

On the NodeJS server i am parsing the JSON like this:

var obj = JSON.parse(message);

Any ideas how i can manage to send all characters without problems?

Try to replace all the " and ' with a \ before them. Do this just for the msget object(String, I guess). Don't forget that \ must be escaped too.

If you want to simply escape a string, not an object or array, use this:

String escaped = JSONObject.valueToString(" Quotes \" ' ' \" ");

http://www.json.org/javadoc/org/json/JSONObject.html#valueToString(java.lang.Object)

According to the answer here, quotes in values need to be escaped. You can do that with \"

So just repalce the quote in your values

msget = msget.replace("\"", "\\\"");

The JSON specification at https://www.json.org/ is very simple by design. Escaping characters in JSON strings is not hard. This code works for me:

private String escape(String raw) {
    String escaped = raw;
    escaped = escaped.replace("\\", "\\\\");
    escaped = escaped.replace("\"", "\\\"");
    escaped = escaped.replace("\b", "\\b");
    escaped = escaped.replace("\f", "\\f");
    escaped = escaped.replace("\n", "\\n");
    escaped = escaped.replace("\r", "\\r");
    escaped = escaped.replace("\t", "\\t");
    // TODO: escape other non-printing characters using uXXXX notation
    return escaped;
}

The best method would be using some JSON library, e.g. Jackson ( http://jackson.codehaus.org ).

But if this is not an option simply escape msget before adding it to your string:

The wrong way to do this is

String msgetEscaped = msget.replaceAll("\"", "\\\"");

Either use (as recommended in the comments)

String msgetEscaped = msget.replace("\"", "\\\"");

or

String msgetEscaped = msget.replaceAll("\"", "\\\\\"");

A sample with all three variants can be found here: http://ideone.com/Nt1XzO

public static String ecapse(String jsString) {
    jsString = jsString.replace("\\", "\\\\");
    jsString = jsString.replace("\"", "\\\"");
    jsString = jsString.replace("\b", "\\b");
    jsString = jsString.replace("\f", "\\f");
    jsString = jsString.replace("\n", "\\n");
    jsString = jsString.replace("\r", "\\r");
    jsString = jsString.replace("\t", "\\t");
    jsString = jsString.replace("/", "\\/");
    return jsString;
}

Apache Commons

If you're already using Apache commons, it provides a static method for this:

StringEscapeUtils.escapeJson("some string")

It converts any string into one that's properly escaped for inclusion in JSON

See the documentation here

org.json.simple.JSONObject.escape() escapes quotes,, /, \r, \n, \b, \f, \t and other control characters.

import org.json.simple.JSONValue;
JSONValue.escape("test string");

• json-simple home
• document

Add pom.xml when using maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.googlecode.json-simple</groupId>
    <artifactId>json-simple</artifactId>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Consider Moshi's JsonWriter class (source). It has a wonderful API and it reduces copying to a minimum, everything is nicely streamed to the OutputStream.

OutputStream os = ...;
JsonWriter json = new JsonWriter(Okio.sink(os));
json
  .beginObject()
  .name("id").value(userID)
  .name("type").value(methodn)
  ...
  .endObject();