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I use the JavaScriptSerializer class of ASP.net to serialize my object and return it to the client side. How can I deserialize the string using JavaScript?

Jeffrey Hantin
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Jishnu A P
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4 Answers4

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If you're using jQuery already, you'll be happy to know that you can parse a JSON string with jQuery.parseJSON.

If you aren't using jQuery and don't want to, you can always use the wonderful JSON.parse or json_parse, written by none other than Douglas Crockford himself.

I would avoid eval() if it isn't necessary.

Community
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Zack The Human
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  • +1 because ... 1) *Someone else* has already solved this problem 2) *Someone else* has already solved this problem in a good way. –  Jan 21 '11 at 04:55
  • Except that jQuery.parseJSON() doesn't serialize .Net DateTime objects into jscript date objects. Instead they're simply deserialized to strings. – Jeff LaFay Sep 13 '12 at 15:26
  • @jlafay JSON (as per the JSON specification) doesn't support `Date` objects. Since `jQuery.parseJSON` will parse a valid `JSON` string into a JavaScript object, I would not expect it to deserialize `Date` objects at all regardless of their format. – Zack The Human Oct 28 '12 at 00:34
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I am going to propose ... do nothing. This assumes the serialized result is returned with the page and/or an additional HTML fragment.

// In some JavaScript area somewhere in the ASP page
var myObject = <%= JSONIfiedObjectResult %>;

This works and is valid because JSON is a subset of JavaScript literals. Note that I did not put quotes around the <%= %>.

If the de-serialization is the result on an AJAX call returning JSON, etc, then see Zack's answer.

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Pretty trivial -- just do

var x = eval(theString);

which should get everything except ASP.Net's unique serialization of DateTime, which is not supported by "real" JSON and is an ASP.Net extension. To use ASP.Net's deserializer, make sure you include an <asp:ScriptManager> tag in your page, and call

var x = Sys.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer.deserialize(theString);

which will invoke the special Date handling and probably get you better security.

Jeffrey Hantin
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0

Pretty standard, not so safe:

eval('(' + json + ')');

Kind of cool thing that jQuery does, still not very safe:

(new Function('return ' + json))();
sdleihssirhc
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