How do I turn my string into an array? (JSON.parse errors)

Question

How do I turn a string that resembles an array into an actual array? This thread advised that I should use JSON.parse -- Convert string into Array in rails, but when I go to try that, I get an error

localhost:nightminer satishp$ rails console
Running via Spring preloader in process 9674
Loading development environment (Rails 5.0.6)
irb(main):001:0> JSON.parse("['2de33']")
JSON::ParserError: 409: unexpected token at ''2de33']'
    from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.4.2_1/lib/ruby/2.4./json/common.rb:156:in `parse'
    from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.4.2_1/lib/ruby/2.4./json/common.rb:156:in `parse'
    from (irb):1

Any advice on how to get my array of strings is appreciated. Note I can't change the input (I can't remove the single quotes).

Where did you get this string? Just because it looks sort of like JSON doesn't mean it is JSON or that JSON.parse is the right tool for the job. — mu is too short
– mu is too short, Commented Mar 9, 2018 at 22:42
No it doesn't, mrzasa has a link to the JSON standard in their answer. JSON is similar to JavaScript but they're not the same thing. — mu is too short
– mu is too short, Commented Mar 9, 2018 at 22:57

mrzasa · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-09 22:30:48Z

3

Single quotes ' are not valid string delimiters in JSON. You need to replace them with double quotes, e.g.:

JSON.parse("['de33']".gsub("'", "\""))
# => ["de33"]

JSON standard says:

A string is a sequence of zero or more Unicode characters, wrapped in double quotes, using backslash escapes. A character is represented as a single character string. A string is very much like a C or Java string.

answered Mar 9, 2018 at 22:30

mrzasa

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