php - Remove quotes (single/double) from key/value of a JSON string

Question

Sample Input String:

{"14" Alloy Wheels (Set of 4)":"N/A","Engine":"CrDi","15" Alloy Wheels":"optional","Other":"16" Wheels"};

There are 4 possible cases:

{"key"here":

,"Key"here":

:"Value"here",

:"Value"here"}

I need to get rid of the inverted commas in between keys and values, which is causing

invalid json

when using json_decode in PHP.

One possible solution is using RegEx, but I am not able to formulate the above possible cases.

Answer 1

I did some testing with your string and I came up with the following solution.

1. Set json formatting apart from the rest
2. Correct the keys and values

3. Restore json formatting

   function repairJson( $str) {
       $search = array( '":"', '","', '":{"', '"},"', '{"', '"}' );
       $replace = array("':'", "','", "':{'", "'},'", "{'", "'}" );
       // Distinct json default formatting
       $str = str_replace( $search, $replace, $str );
       // Find and replace all " that are not yet escaped
       $str = preg_replace( '/([^\])"/', '${1}"', $str );
       // Restore json default formatting
       $str = str_replace( $replace, $search, $str );
       return $str;
   }