JSON Escape and JSON Unescape refer to the process of converting special characters within a string to a safe representation (escaping) or converting them back to their original form (unescaping) when working with JSON data.
JSON Escape
In JSON, certain characters have special meanings, and if you want to include them as part of a string, you need to escape them. This means replacing the special characters with a backslash (\) followed by the character code.
For example:
Double quotes (") in a string must be escaped as \" to avoid ending the string prematurely.
Backslashes (\) themselves must be escaped as \\.
Newline characters are escaped as \n.
Example of escaping a string:
json
{
"message": "He said, \"Hello!\"\nHow are you?"
}
This ensures that the quotes and newline are properly represented in JSON.
JSON Unescape
Unescaping is the reverse process. It takes the escaped string and converts it back to its original form by removing the escape characters.
For example:
\" becomes ".
\\ becomes \.
\n becomes an actual newline.
Example of unescaping the string:
json
{
"message": "He said, \"Hello!\"\nHow are you?"
}
After unescaping, this would return:
sql
He said, "Hello!"
How are you?
Why is it needed?
Escape: Ensures that special characters like quotes, backslashes, and control characters don't interfere with the format of the JSON data or get misinterpreted.
Unescape: Restores the string to its original, human-readable form, making it usable for processing or displaying to a user.