jQuery won't parse my JSON from AJAX query

Question

I'm having difficulty parsing some JSON data returned from my server using jQuery.ajax()

To perform the AJAX I'm using:

$.ajax({   url: myUrl,   cache: false,   dataType: "json",   success: function(data){     ...   },   error: function(e, xhr){     ...   } });   

And if I return an array of items then it works fine:

[ { title: "One", key: "1" }, { title: "Two", key: "2" } ] 

The success function is called and receives the correct object.

However, when I'm trying to return a single object:

{ title: "One", key: "1" }  

The error function is called and xhr contains 'parsererror'. I've tried wrapping the JSON in parenthesis on the server before sending it down the wire, but it makes no difference. Yet if I paste the content into a string in Javascript and then use the eval() function, it evaluates it perfectly.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Anthony

Answer 1

Is your server sending data as Content-Type "*/json"? If not, modify the response headers accordingly. Sending "application/json" would be fine, for example.

Answer 2

According to the json.org specification, your return is invalid. The names are always quoted, so you should be returning

{ "title": "One", "key": "1" } 

and

[ { "title": "One", "key": "1" }, { "title": "Two", "key": "2" } ] 

This may not be the problem with your setup, since you say one of them works now, but it should be fixed for correctness in case you need to switch to another JSON parser in the future.