Regex issue with JSON Response

Question

I am trying to use a regex to add quotes to any number in a JSON response. A snippet from the JSON is below. Any help is appreciated.

    "videoIds":[2929365783001,2890489654001,2872798368001,...]

    I need:
    "videoIds":["2929365783001","2890489654001","2872798368001",...]

Answer 1

You can't reliably do it with a regex. Just parse the response as JSON, modify the resulting data structure and re-serialize it as JSON if needed. Here's how I'd do it in Python:

data = json.loads(response)
data["videoIds"] = [str(i) for i in data["videoIds"]]
modified_response = json.dumps(data)

Answer 2

Assuming your JSON string is called str , you could try several things:

1. convert the JSON into a JavaScript object and then convert the contents of the "videoIds" array into strings, as in:

    var obj=JSON.parse(str), rv=[]; obj.videoIds.forEach(function(elt){ rv.push(elt.toString()); }); obj.videoIds=rv; str=JSON.stringify(obj); 

2. extract the videoIds portion of the str, regex the numbers to add double quotes, and replace it:

    var matches=str.match(/"videoIds":\\[([^\\]]+)\\]/), targ=matches[0].replace(/[\\[\\]]/g,function(m){ return '\\\\'+m; }), // escape regex magic chars '[' and ']' nums=matches[2].split(/,/), rv='"videoIds":["'+nums.join('","')+'"]'; str=str.replace(new Regex(targ),rv); // replace the extracted line 

But generally, it's probably easier to modify the original object before it is converted to JSON so that all the numbers are actually strings.

Answer 3

This is a regex way in ruby. I assume that except the missing quotes, the JSON is well formed. This code will add quotes to all keys and no-empty values without quotes. Note that this will add double-quotes to values like numbers, true , false , null too.

jsonstr = <<'LOD'
{
    menu: {
        id: "file",
        "value": File,
        "popup": {
            "videoIds":[2929365783001,2890489654001,2872798368001,...],
            toto:titi,
            "\"glip":["glop\\",glup]
        }
    }
}
LOD
jsonstr = jsonstr.gsub(
    /(?x)
     (  # group 1: possible content before a value or key without double quotes
        (?>
           (?> "(?>[^"\\]++|\\{2}|\\.)*+" )? # content inside double quotes
           [\]\[}{:,\s]++                    # spaces and special characters 
        )++
     )
     ( [^\]\[{},:"]+? ) # group 2: value or key without double quotes
     (?= \s* (?: [\]:,}] | \z ) )
    /,
     '\1"\2"')
puts jsonstr

The group 1 is used to skip all keys or values between double quotes.