How to strip invalid characters from a JSON $http.get() request?

Question

I'm pulling data from a web-service that I don't control. The results include a backslash before apostrophe's in names (such as O'Donnell). According to JSLint.com the structure of the JSON is valid - except when the response includes the backslashed apostrophes .

I have alerted the provider of the web service. While I am waiting for a response from ReallyBigCo, I wanted to learn more about what's possible on the request end.

Is there a way to strip characters from a JSON object when making an $http.get() request?

I've been searching for solutions to capture the response as a string in order to strip the characters. However, I'm getting an error as soon as the $http.get() function finishes.

This AngularJS code works fine (when the JSON response is valid):

var app = angular.module('app',[]);

app.factory('appresults', function($http) {
  return {
    getAsync: function(callback) {
      var myURL = https://address-to-really-big-co-webservice.com;
      $http.get(myURL).success(callback);
    }
  };
});

app.controller('appcontroller', function($scope, appresults) {
  appresults.getAsync(function(results) {
    $scope.appdata = results.findUsers;
  });
});

I can display a list of emails in my page using this code when the JSON is valid:

<p ng-repeat="item in appdata">{{item.email}}</p>

Here is an example of working JSON results:

{"findUsers":[
{"email":"aaa.somebody@domain.com"},
{"email":"bbb.somebody@domain.com"},
{"email":"ccc.somebody@domain.com"}
]}

While these JSON results cause an error:

{"findUsers":[
{"email":"aaa.somebody@domain.com"},
{"email":"bbb.somebody@domain.com"},
{"email":"ccc.somebody@domain.com"},
{"email":"ddd.o\'somebody@domain.com"}
]}

The results with apostrophe creates the following error in the console in IE9:

SyntaxError: Invalid characterundefined

I've been searching for solutions to reformat the response, but any JSON results with an apostrophe immediately causes this error. So it doesn't seem possible to use a simple solution such as results.replace(/'/g,""); unless I know how to address the object before the error occurs.

Answer 1

You can do your own transformation of the response and "fix" the data before converting the JSON to an object yourself ( plnkr ):

$scope.testOther = function() {
  $http.get(url, { 
    transformResponse: function(data, headersGetter) {
      // here data is the raw string, you can fix the data here
      // replace first object property name "coord" with "FIXED"
      data = data.replace("coord", "FIXED");
      return angular.fromJson(data);
    }
  }).success(function(data) {
    setValues(data);
  });
};