Invalid JSON parsing using PHP

Question

I'm pulling a JSON feed that is invalid JSON. It's missing quotes entirely. I've tried a few things, like explode() and str_replace(), to get the string looking a little bit more like valid JSON, but with an associate JSON string inside, it generally gets screwed up.

Here's an example:

id:43015,name:'John Doe',level:15,systems:[{t:6,glr:1242,n:'server',s:185,c:9}],classs:0,subclass:5

Are there any JSON parsers for php out there that can handle invalid JSON like this?

Edit: I'm trying to use json_decode() on this string. It returns nothing.

Answer 1

I'd say your best bet is to download the source of a JSON decoder (they're not huge) and fiddle with it, especially if you know what's wrong with the JSON you're trying to decode.

The example you provided needs { } around it, too, which may help.

Answer 2

1. All the quotes should be double quotes " and not single quotes '.
2. All the keys should be quoted.
3. The whole element should be an object.

    function my_json_decode($s) {
        $s = str_replace(
            array('"',  "'"),
            array('\"', '"'),
            $s
        );
        $s = preg_replace('/(\w+):/i', '"\1":', $s);
        return json_decode(sprintf('{%s}', $s));
    }