Javascript Objects & arrays to server through form (json/??) - best practices

Question

I would like to know what would be the best practice to perform this:

1. Based on a selection, create a list of "selected items" which would be a list of this kind:

     {items {categoryString {tag_id1 {[fr]=>itemFR, [en]=>itemEN} {categoryString {tag_id2 {[fr]=>item2FR, [en]=>item2EN} {categoryString2 {tag_id3 {[fr]=>item3FR, [en]=>item3EN} } 

2. Send this information to my server script when sending my form (not through javascript but normal post form).

3. Parse the received information on my server script (PHP).

Point 1 is done like this:

function initTagArray(listSelector) {
    var et_tag_list = new Object();
    var cat = "CATDEF";
    et_tag_list[cat] = new Object();

    listSelector.each(function() {
        et_tag_list[cat][$(this).val()] = [];
        et_tag_list[cat][$(this).val()]['fr'] = [$(this).text()];
        et_tag_list[cat][$(this).val()]['en'] = [$(this).text()];
    });

    return et_tag_list;
}​

Point 2 : I was thinking about storing that information in JSON array, but not sure how... By parsing my object/array and manually creating the json array?

Point 3 : If Json array is sent it will be easy to parse it.

I'm looking here for the best practices on how to do this the most clean way as possible.

Answer 1

Try JSON.stringify on those objects. You will find lots of articles in the internet about how stringify works. For example try this: https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Using_native_JSON .

You can stringify complex JavaScript objects (say x ) if you define toJSON function on it (probably you would implement in in such a way that it will gather data in the form of simple js dictionary and then you will call JSON.stringify(data) on it) and then call JSON.stringify(x) .

Answer 2

Use json stringified object/data that is either parsed as follows:

var myJSONObject = {"bindings": [
        {"ircEvent": "PRIVMSG", "method": "newURI", "regex": "^http://.*"},
        {"ircEvent": "PRIVMSG", "method": "deleteURI", "regex": "^delete.*"},
        {"ircEvent": "PRIVMSG", "method": "randomURI", "regex": "^random.*"}
    ]
}

var myJSONText = JSON.stringify(myJSONObject );

you can look for these links for implementation etc:
check question text on this link : json object accessing
JSON in JavaScript
JSON.Stringify
pass json object to array - autocomplete
Create a JSON serialized object to make a $.postJSON call