Malformed JSON when sending from Jquery to PHP

Question

I'm trying to send a JQuery request to an API I'm making (first time, learning!) but my php code reports the JSON is malformed.

if I make a JSON array in PHP and pass that through it works fine but if I try to request via JQuery it always says malformed.

Im stuck!

the Javascript side looks like this...

jsonrequest = "{request: 'getJobs', token : 'eb024fab2bf6a1bfb5863dcaabcfd63fcaea50e429237df3f1cbcbfcf9b2'}";
    $.ajax({
    url: 'api.php',
    async: true,
    dataType: 'json',
    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
    data: jsonrequest,


       success: function ( result ) {
            console.log(result);
        }
});

and the PHP looks like this

$data       = file_get_contents("php://input");

if(isJson($data)) {

        // never passes the isJSON validation.

        $json       = json_decode($data,true);
        $request    = sanitize($json['request']);
        }


function isJSON($string)
{
    // decode the JSON data
    $result = json_decode($string);

    // switch and check possible JSON errors
    switch (json_last_error()) {
        case JSON_ERROR_NONE:
            $error = ''; // JSON is valid // No error has occurred
            break;
        case JSON_ERROR_DEPTH:
            $error = 'The maximum stack depth has been exceeded.';
            break;
        case JSON_ERROR_STATE_MISMATCH:
            $error = 'Invalid or malformed JSON.';
            break;
        case JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR:
            $error = 'Control character error, possibly incorrectly encoded.';
            break;
        case JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX:
            $error = 'Syntax error, malformed JSON.';
            break;
        // PHP >= 5.3.3
        case JSON_ERROR_UTF8:
            $error = 'Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded.';
            break;
        // PHP >= 5.5.0
        case JSON_ERROR_RECURSION:
            $error = 'One or more recursive references in the value to be encoded.';
            break;
        // PHP >= 5.5.0
        case JSON_ERROR_INF_OR_NAN:
            $error = 'One or more NAN or INF values in the value to be encoded.';
            break;
        case JSON_ERROR_UNSUPPORTED_TYPE:
            $error = 'A value of a type that cannot be encoded was given.';
            break;
        default:
            $error = 'Unknown JSON error occured.';
            break;
    }

    if ($error !== '') {
        // throw the Exception or exit // or whatever :)
        $output = array('status' => "error",'message' => $error);
        echo json_encode($output);
        exit;
    }

    // everything is OK
    return $result;
}

Answer 1

Try

data: {request: 'getJobs', token: 'eb024fab2bf6a1bfb5863dcaabcfd63fcaea50e429237df3f1cbcbfcf9b2'}

without the quotes around it. jQuery should handle that for you.

If it still fails, maybe open this up in the developer tools and look at the ajax request and see what the data actually looks like going out to get an idea.

Answer 2

Your code

jsonrequest = "{request: 'getJobs', token : 'eb024fab2bf6a1bfb5863dcaabcfd63fcaea50e429237df3f1cbcbfcf9b2'}";

you are defining jsonrequest as a string not an object.

Try one of two things (note the key name has to be wrapped in quotes too)

 jsonrequest = {'request': 'getJobs', 'token' : 'eb024fab2bf6a1bfb5863dcaabcfd63fcaea50e429237df3f1cbcbfcf9b2'};

or if the jsonrequest has to built as a string you can use jQuery.parseJSON()

jsonrequest = '{"request": "getJobs", "token" : "eb024fab2bf6a1bfb5863dcaabcfd63fcaea50e429237df3f1cbcbfcf9b2"}';
jsonrequest = $.parseJSON(jsonrequest);