PHP json_encode is returning as array string, but is not converting to array in JavaScript properly

Question

I make a $.post request to submit data and return invalid data. Here is the $.post request:

    $('#submitAll').click(function(){
        $.post("php/entries/submitAndReload.php", {array : dataObject.dataArray}, function(data){

            alert(data); // alerts: "[[“0”, “0”,””,””, “0”, “0”, “0”, “0”,”No Style”]]"
            dataObject.dataArray = data;

            $.post("php/entries/stageArea.php", {array : dataObject.dataArray}, function(data){
                $('#stageArea').html(data);
            });
        });
    });

dataObject.dataArray is a double array and alert(data) alerts what looks like the proper format for the subsequent $.post request, but the output from the 2nd $.post request looks like I pass in the following array:[[ "[" ]]. The first field gets a "[" and no other fields get data.

I'm not sure what's going on here and how to properly store the returned data into dataObject.dataArray

What's going on here?

Answer 1

Correct this line:

dataObject.dataArray = data;

To this:

dataObject.dataArray = JSON.parse( data );

You need to parse JSON, untill parsing it is just a string.

Answer 2

Add dataType argument to $.post.

When set as 'json' jQuery knows to parse it to object/array from json string

$.post(url, postData, function(data){
     // handling code
     alert($.type(data)); //"array"

},'json');

If you set proper content Type header at server also it helps

Reference: $.post docs