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1

I've some PHP source code that are simple key-value arrays like these:

return array('var1' => 'var2' );

And

return array('sub' => array( 'var1' => 'var2' ) );

And I need to parse them into JavaScript objects, because I've a JavaScript implementation of a PHP library and I want to test the compatibility using the original test cases.

There are over a 100 tests, so manual conversion is not practical.

Is there an easy way to convert these into JavaScript objects without using PHP?

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1  
Why not use JSON? Why without PHP? –  elclanrs Apr 20 '13 at 8:28
    
Json is fine but since the test framework runs in a node.js app PHP isn't a good option. –  mabs Apr 20 '13 at 11:24

4 Answers 4

up vote 1 down vote accepted

To actually answer your question – how to parse PHP's associative arrays to JSON without using PHP – let's use some JavaScript code.

"array('sub' => array( 'var1' => 'var2' ) );".replace(/array\(/g, '{').replace(/\)/g, '}').replace(/=>/g, ':').replace(/;/g, '').replace(/'/g, '"');

This is assuming you just happen to sit on some source code and want to copy it into a Node.js application, and that all the data looks exactly like this. If the data happens to be on multiple lines, if you even want to parse away the "return"/";" parts, if some of the data contains indexed arrays, or if any of the values contain the string I just naively parse away, you'll have to make this script a bit smarter.

And as others have said, if you're interacting with a PHP service, just use json_encode().

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1  
Thanks, that's a lot simpler than I thought it would be. –  mabs Apr 22 '13 at 3:03
up vote 2 down vote

This should work!

<?# somefile.php ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var json = '<?= json_encode(array('sub' => array( 'var1' => 'var2' ))) ?>';
    var object = JSON.parse(json);
    console.log(object);
</script>

Output

{
  sub: {
    var1: "var2"
  }
}

More commonly, you will see a language-agnostic API which simply provides JSON responses. You could easily test this using asynchronous requests to the API from JavaScript (in-browser, via Node.js, etc.);

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1  
is there a need for JSON.parse ? what if you write var object = <?php echo json_encode(array('sub' => array( 'var1' => 'var2' ))) ?>; instead? –  user2264587 Apr 20 '13 at 9:12
    
Object literals are not defined in JSON; they are defined in JavaScript's object literal syntax. They are similar, but they are not the same. –  naomik Apr 20 '13 at 9:14
    
I thought JSON was a subset of object literals syntax, therefore if something is valid JSON it would be a valid literal? –  user2264587 Apr 20 '13 at 9:17
1  
Yeah, almost, but it's not. Just parse the JSON as intended and you won't have any strange side effects. –  naomik Apr 20 '13 at 9:20
    
you're right! also, in your link it shows a valid JSON string that isn't even a valid javascript string (after quoting it). not that I understand why it's like that.. –  user2264587 Apr 20 '13 at 9:40
up vote 1 down vote

If I understood you correctly, you need to use json_encode() like this:

return json_encode(array('sub' => array( 'var1' => 'var2' )));

The returned value: {"sub":{"var1":"var2"}}

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up vote 0 down vote

You can use json_encode() in PHP and JSON.parse() in JavaScript.

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