How do you escape characters within a string (JSON format)

Question

What is the idiomatic way to escape only the characters in a string require to be escaped by the JSON specification.

(I am not trying to marshal/unmarshal an object or string, I just want to escape the characters inside a string.

This works, but surely there is a more idiomatic way? https://play.golang.org/p/rcHZbrjFyyH

func main() {
    fmt.Println(jsonEscape(`dog "fish" cat`))
    //output: dog \"fish\" cat
}

func jsonEscape(i string) string {
    b, err := json.Marshal(i)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    // Trim the beginning and trailing " character
    return string(b[1:len(b)-1])
}

A slight improvement is to return string(b[1:len(b)-1]). This reduces memory allocated by two bytes. Otherwise, marshaling is the way to encoded form of a string (or any other value). — user5728991
– user5728991, Commented Aug 5, 2018 at 6:36
try HTMLEscape maybe? golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/#HTMLEscape — Not_a_Golfer
– Not_a_Golfer, Commented Aug 5, 2018 at 7:37
You can simply copy what is used inside the json package to do the job. golang.org/src/encoding/json/encode.go#L876 It's around line 876. If you discount for unicodes, it's basically just a switch. — leaf bebop
– leaf bebop, Commented Aug 5, 2018 at 9:38
The json.HTMLEscape escapes additional characters with the purpose of making JSON safe for embedding into HTML. JSON only needs ", backslash, and control characters escaped. json.org — user84118
– user84118, Commented Aug 19, 2018 at 22:06

nbari · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-05 10:16:30Z

3

I don't know if using backticks ` is the most idiomatic way to escape characters but is more readable, for example, you could use something like:

fmt.Println(jsonEscape(`dog "fish" cat`))

https://play.golang.org/p/khG7qBROaIx

Check the String literals section.

answered Aug 5, 2018 at 10:16

nbari

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