Since yesterday I was trying to solve this tricky problem, and after a lot of hair pulling I came up with this solution.
First let us clarify our assumptions.
- json string should be right formated.
- The keys and values are quoted with double quotation.
Analyzing the problem:
We know that json keys formated like this (,"keyString":) and json value is (:"valueString",)
keyString: is any sequence of characters except (:").
valueString: is any sequence of characters except (",).
Our goal is to escape quotations inside valueString, to achive that we need to separate keyStrings and valueStrings.
- But we have also a valid json format like this ("keyString":digit,) this will cause a problem because it breaks out assumption that says values always ended with (",)
- Another problem is having empty values like ("keyString":" ")
Now after analyzing the problem we can say
- json keyString has (,") before it and (":) after it.
- json valueString can have (:") before and (",) after OR
(:) before and digit as a value then (,) after OR
(:) followed by (" ") then (,)
The solution:
Using this facts the code will be
function escapeJsonValues($json_str){
$patern = '~(?:,\s*"((?:.(?!"\s*:))+.)"\s*(?=\:))(?:\:\s*(?:(\d+)|("\s*")|(?:"((?!\s*")(?:.(?!"\s*,))+.)")))~';
//remove { }
$json_str = rtrim(trim(trim($json_str),'{'),'}');
if(strlen($json_str)<5) {
//not valid json string;
return null;
}
//put , at the start nad the end of the string
$json_str = ($json_str[strlen($json_str)-1] ===',') ?','.$json_str :','.$json_str.',';
//strip all new lines from the string
$json_str=preg_replace('~[
\t]~','',$json_str);
preg_match_all($patern, $json_str, $matches);
$json='{';
for($i=0;$i<count($matches[0]);$i++){
$json.='"'.$matches[1][$i].'":';
//value is digit
if(strlen($matches[2][$i])>0){
$json.=$matches[2][$i].',';
}
//no value
elseif (strlen($matches[3][$i])>0) {
$json.='"",';
}
//text, and now we can see if there is quotations it will be related to the text not json
//so we can add slashes safely
//also foreword slashes should be escaped
else{
$json.='"'.str_replace(['\\','"' ],['/','\"'],$matches[4][$i]).'",';
}
}
return trim(rtrim($json,','),',').'}';
}
Note: The code realizes white spaces.