How can I check if a value is a json object?

Question

My server side code returns a value which is a json object on success and a string \'false\' on failure. Now how can I check whether the returned value is a json object?

Answer 1

I don't really like the accepted answer. First and foremost it requires jQuery, which is not always available or required. Secondly, it does a full stringification of the object which to me is overkill. Here's a simple function that thoroughly detects whether a value is JSON-like, using nothing more than a few parts of the lodash library for genericity.

import * as isNull from 'lodash/isNull'
import * as isPlainObject from 'lodash/isPlainObject'
import * as isNumber from 'lodash/isNumber'
import * as isBoolean from 'lodash/isBoolean'
import * as isString from 'lodash/isString'
import * as isArray from 'lodash/isArray'

function isJSON(val) {
  if (isNull(val)
   || isBoolean(val)
   || isString(val))
    return true;
  if (isNumber(val)) 
     return !isNaN(val) && isFinite(val)
  if (isArray(val))
    return Array.prototype.every.call(val, isJSON)
  if (isPlainObject(val)) {
    for (const key of Object.keys(val)) {
      if (!isJSON(val[key]))
        return false
    }
    return true
  }
  return false
}

I've even taken the time to put it up in npm as a package: https://npmjs.com/package/is-json-object. Use it together with something like Webpack to get it in the browser.

Hope this helps someone!