Parsing malformed JSON in JavaScript

Question

Thanks for looking!

BACKGROUND

I am writing some front-end code that consumes a JSON service which is returning malformed JSON. Specifically, the keys are n

Answer 1

You can avoid using a regexp altogether and still output a JavaScript object from a malformed JSON string (keys without quotes, single quotes, etc), using this simple trick:

var jsonify = (function(div){
  return function(json){
    div.setAttribute('onclick', 'this.__json__ = ' + json);
    div.click();
    return div.__json__;
  }
})(document.createElement('div'));

// Let's say you had a string like '{ one: 1 }' (malformed, a key without quotes)
// jsonify('{ one: 1 }') will output a good ol' JS object ;)

Here's a demo: http://codepen.io/csuwldcat/pen/dfzsu (open your console)