Remove double-quotes from a json_encoded string on the keys

Question

I have a json_encoded array which is fine.

I need to strip the double-quotes on all of the keys of the json string on returning it from a function call.

How would I go about doing this and returning it successfully?

Thanks!

I do apologise, here is a snippet of the json code:

{"start_date":"2011-01-01 09:00","end_date":"2011-01-01 10:00","text":"test"}

Just to add a little more info:

I will be retrieving the JSON via an AJAX request, so if it would be easier, I am open to ideas in how to do this on the javascript side.

Answer 1

EDITED as per anubhava's comment

$str = '{"start_date":"2011-01-01 09:00","end_date":"2011-01-01 10:00","text":"test"}';
$str = preg_replace('/"([^"]+)"\s*:\s*/', '$1:', $str);
echo $str;

This certainly works for the above string, although there maybe some edge cases that I haven't thought of for which this will not work. Whether this will suit your purposes depends on how static the format of the string and the elements/values it contains will be.

Answer 2

TL;DR: Missing quotes is how Chrome shows it is a JSON object instead of a string. Ensure that you have Header('Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF8'); in PHP's AJAX response to solve the real problem.

DETAILS: A common reason for wanting to solve this problem is due to finding this difference while debugging the processing of returned AJAX data.

In my case I saw the difference using Chrome's debugging tools. When connected to the legacy system, upon success, Chrome showed that there were no quotes shown around keys in the response according to the debugger. This allowed the object to be immediately treated as an object without using a JSON.parse() call. Debugging my new AJAX destination, there were quotes shown in the response and variable was a string and not an object.
I finally realized the true issue when I tested the AJAX response externally saw the legacy system actually DID have quotes around the keys. This was not what the Chrome dev tools showed. The only difference was that on the legacy system there was a header specifying the content type. I added this to the new (WordPress) system and the calls were now fully compatible with the original script and the success function could handle the response as an object without any parsing required. Now I can switch between the legacy and new system without any changes except the destination URL.