Safest way to send JSON string to PHP server

Question

I've been trying to send a JSON string to PHP server like this:

$.ajax({  
    type: "POST",  
    url: "themes.php?page=themeoptions",  
    data: {structure : JSON.stringify(structure)},    
});

However, every quotation mark from the string I send is escaped automatically, so I can't decode it in PHP with json_decode(). I could remove all the escape characters, but I really doubt that this way of sending JSON data to server is safe.

So, I was wondering if you have any ideas on how to do that in a simple and safe (not necessarily bulletfroof) way?

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can just do '{"structure":' + JSON.stringify(structure) + '}' or {structure: structure}

The first one is a JSON String so jQuery doesn't need to parse it. The second is a javascript object, so jQuery knows exactly how to parse it.

But you are mixing the two, so jQuery is confused and re-encodes your object, because you encoded only half your object.

So another alternative would be JSON.stringify({structure: structure })

Answer 2

Try this

$.ajax({  
    type: "POST",  
    url: "themes.php?page=themeoptions",  
    data: {structure: structure},    
});

Answer 3

$.ajax({  
    type: "POST",  
    url: "themes.php?page=themeoptions",  
    data: structure,    
});

Quoting from the documentation :

dataObject String

Data to be sent to the server. It is converted to a query string, if not already a string. It's appended to the url for GET-requests. See processData option to prevent this automatic processing. Object must be Key/Value pairs. If value is an Array, jQuery serializes multiple values with same key based on the value of the traditional setting (described below).