JSONObject in org.json lib: utf-8 encoding issue

Question

I'm following the Unicode - How to get the characters right? post.

The only issue I have is with JSONObject encoding (I'm using org.json lib).

The issue arises when I put a string like àòùèì€€, for example, in a JSONObject.

System.out.println(entry.getValue());
JSONObject temp = new JSONObject();
temp.put("values", entry.getValue();
System.out.println(temp.toString());

I obtain àòùèì€€ and {"values":"àòùèì\u20ac\u20ac"} instead of {"values":"àòùèì€€"}.

EDIT

By passing from an hashtable to a jsonObject, the extended utf-8 encoding is used. For example, the hashtable

 {€èòàùì€ù=èòàù€ì, €òàèùì€=èòàù€ìç§$}

becomes the JSONObject

 {"\u20acòàèùì\u20ac":"èòàù\u20acìç§$","\u20acèòàùì\u20acù":"èòàù\u20acì"}

Esailija · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-09 09:48:55Z

2

They are exactly equal, with the Unicode escaping taking a bit more space. Like writing \u004a in Java is exactly the same as writing a. If correctness is your concern, it doesn't matter.

And it won't take considerable amount of extra space either unless most of your text is between 0x2000 - 0x20FF:

The following code escapes C0 and C1 control characters, but it also escapes 0x2000 - 0x20FF:

     if (c < ' ' || (c >= '\u0080' && c < '\u00a0')
                    || (c >= '\u2000' && c < '\u2100')) {

So any character between 0x2000 - 0x20FF and control characters are represented as unicode escapes. This makes sense for control characters because those are not allowed in JSON in their unescaped form.

As for 0x2000 - 0x20FF, I have no idea because the code is not commented. Every character unescaped in that range is valid JSON. Of course, 0x2028 and 0x2029 are not valid in Javascript (so this small detail makes JSON syntax not a subset of Javascript syntax), so it's good idea to escape those in JSON in case it is being used as JSONP which is Javascript really. But it is not apparent to me why the code escapes a whole range because just 2 characters in the range are illegal.

answered Apr 9, 2013 at 9:48

Esailija

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13 Comments

Sefran2 Over a year ago

Thank you. The problem is that in a jsp page with pageencoding utf-8 and content-type utf-8, if I print the àòùèì\u20ac\u20ac I see àòùèì\u20ac\u20ac and not àòùèì€€.

Esailija Over a year ago

@Cricket yes, but when you decode the JSON, you will get €€ in the decoded objects. The encoded JSON is never used for other than data transfer/storage, you will always decode it before using because it makes no sense to operate on the JSON as a string.

Sefran2 Over a year ago

What do you mean with decode? I get the string from db with rs.getString("json") and I parse it by using Java String. What should I do?

Esailija Over a year ago

@Cricket by decode I mean like using JSON.parse in Javascript to turn the JSON string returned from server into something useable by Javascript. How are you using the JSON on your page?

Sefran2 Over a year ago

In a servlet I retrieve the json string from a mysql db (that use utf-8 for character set and collations). This string is passed to an utility method of mine. This method parses the string and creates another string with html tag. This last string is put in the request, so the receiving jsp can display it.

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