Django/JS: json.dumps and parse.json

Question

I'm no programmer, so I can't go to source code of Django or Jquery and figure out how and why these function don't return what I want from them, because I simply wouldn't understand the source code.

I do one little project for myself and here's my confusion about json part: here's my django/python function:

def searchPatients(request):
    patients = Patients.objects.filter(KeyName__icontains=request.POST.get('KeyName'))
    response = []
    for patient in patients:
        tmpvar = {}
        tmpvar = { 'Name1':patient.Name1, 'Name2':patient.Name2 }
        response.append(tmpvar)
    return HttpResponse(json.dumps(response), content_type="application/json")

I checked in shell, json.dumps(response) gave me this:

'[{"Name2": "TestName2", "Name1": "TestName1"}, {"Name2": "TempName2", "Name1": "TempName1"}]'

Looks ok form me. And then I don't understand part starts. This is my JS/JQuery function:

input_newRecord_Search.keyup(function() {
    $.post('/edit/ajax_search_patients', { KeyName: $(this).val() }, function(data) {
        var patients = jQuery.parseJSON(data);
        for (var patient in patients) {
        $('#searchResults ul').append('<li>'+patients[patient].Name1+'</li><li>+'patients[patient].Name2+'</li>');
        };
    }, "json");
});

I get an error: "SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character". I checked what data jquery gets from server: console.log(data):

[{Name2: "TestName2", Name1: "TestName1"}, {Name2: "TempName2", Name1: "TempName1"}]

So, as far as I know JSON syntax looks like - {"key":"value"} and I'm missing quotes on key field. And I don't understand why I'm missing them. I can put them manually through regex, for instance, but I don't think it's the right way. And using regex I can parse my entire data without need of jQuery.parseJSON(), but again I want to use jQuery function - after all it was made exactly for this purpose. Can anyone help me with this one?

Answer 1

The trick is that when you tell jQuery.post that the server is returning JSON it parses it for you .

// This line can be safely removed;
// jQuery is doing it for you behind the scenes
var patients = jQuery.parseJSON(data);

When you use parseJSON on the already parsed data you wind up trying to parse the string representation of a JavaScript object. Simply use the already parsed data and everything should work correctly.

Answer 2

jQuery is automatically converting the json to js objects for you. You don't need to call parse yourself.