MySQL > JSON, Causing errors with URL's

Question

I have this code converting a mysql query to json:

$sth = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM `staff` ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT 20') or die(mysql_error());
$rows = array();
while($r = mysql_fetch_array($sth)) {
    $rows[] = $r;
}
print json_encode($rows);

Works great, but i have in my database, a url field, here is a sample json row:

{"0":"4","id":"4","1":"Noter 2","name":"Noter 2","2":null,"desc":null,"3":"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/webapps\/productivity\/images\/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg","iconurl":"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/webapps\/productivity\/images\/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg","4":"1262032317","date":"1262032317","5":"dBelement, LLC","company":"dBelement, LLC","6":"http:\/\/dbelement.com\/","companyurl":"http:\/\/dbelement.com\/","7":"http:\/\/noter2.dbelement.com","appurl":"http:\/\/noter2.dbelement.com"},

How can i get around this?

Answer 1

I suppose the "problem" is the presence of backslashed in the URLs ?

Like :

http:\/\/images.apple.com\/webapps\/productivity\/images\/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg

Well, that's not a problem for Javascript : try to assign your JSON data to a Javascript object, and display one of those URL :

var data = {"0":"4","id":"4","1":"Noter 2","name":"Noter 2","2":null,"desc":null,"3":"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/webapps\/productivity\/images\/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg","iconurl":"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/webapps\/productivity\/images\/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg","4":"1262032317","date":"1262032317","5":"dBelement, LLC","company":"dBelement, LLC","6":"http:\/\/dbelement.com\/","companyurl":"http:\/\/dbelement.com\/","7":"http:\/\/noter2.dbelement.com","appurl":"http:\/\/noter2.dbelement.com"};
alert(data[3]);

The URL is displayed correctly :

http://images.apple.com/webapps/productivity/images/noter2_20091223182720-thumb.jpg

So, the backslashes are not a "problem" ;-)

And, in fact, if you take a look at the "string" section of json.org, you'll see that slashes have to be backslashed for your string to be valid.

Answer 2

I don't see a problem here. If you're wondering why the URLs look like this:

http:\/\/www.example.com\/

Instead of like this:

http://www.example.com/

It's because the / characters are being appropriately escaped. When you unserialize the JSON object in javascript, the URLs will look as they do in your database.