Do the JSON keys have to be surrounded by quotes?

Question

Example: Is the following code valid against the JSON Spec?

{
    precision: \"zip\"
}

Or should I always use the following syntax? (And if

Answer 1

From 2.2. Objects

An object structure is represented as a pair of curly brackets surrounding zero or more name/value pairs (or members). A name is a string.

and from 2.5. Strings

A string begins and ends with quotation marks.

So I would say that according to the standard: yes, you should always quote the key (although some parsers may be more forgiving)