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POHow to force JSON-lib's JSONObject.put(..) to escape a string containing JSON?
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  1. POHow to force JSON-lib's JSONObject.put(..) to escape a string containing JSON?
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    copied!<p><strong>When using JSON-lib's <code>JSONObject</code>, how can I stop the <code>put</code> method from storing a String which contains JSON as JSON rather than as an escaped string?</strong></p> <p>For instance:</p> <pre><code>JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(); obj.put("jsonStringValue","{\"hello\":\"world\"}"); obj.put("naturalStringValue", "\"hello world\""); System.out.println(obj.toString()); System.out.println(obj.getString("jsonStringValue")); System.out.println(obj.getString("naturalStringValue")); </code></pre> <p>prints:</p> <pre><code>{"jsonStringValue":{"hello":"world"},"naturalStringValue":"\"hello world\""} {"hello":"world"} "hello world" </code></pre> <p>and I want it to print:</p> <pre><code>{"jsonStringValue":"{\"hello\":\"world\"}","naturalStringValue":"\"hello world\""} {"hello":"world"} "hello world" </code></pre> <p>Yes, I realize this is obnoxious. However, this is in support of a JSON serialization pipeline for which, for interoperability's sake, this is the expected behavior. There are cases in which we would be serializing user input which may be/contain valid JSON. We wouldn't want the user input to become a part of the JSON object that we're serializing said input to.</p> <p>Manual escaping doesn't work because it causes JSON-lib to escape the <code>\</code> characters:</p> <pre><code>JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(); obj.put("naturalJSONValue","{\"hello\":\"world\"}"); obj.put("escapedJSONValue", "{\\\"hello\\\":\\\"world\\\"}"); System.out.println(obj.toString()); System.out.println(obj.getString("naturalJSONValue")); System.out.println(obj.getString("escapedJSONValue")); </code></pre> <p>Output:</p> <pre><code>{"naturalJSONValue":{"hello":"world"},"escapedJSONValue":"{\\\"hello\\\":\\\"world\\\"}"} {"hello":"world"} {\"hello\":\"world\"} </code></pre> <p>At this point, any workarounds to enable manual selective escaping of a complex JSON object would completely negate the value of using JSON-lib in the first place.</p> <p>Also, I understand that this question has been asked <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4547143/json-lib-escaping-preserving-strings">before</a>, but unfortunately I cannot accept its answer so easily. JSON-lib is a heavily-used dependency in many areas of my project and swapping it out would be a big undertaking. I need to be absolutely sure that there's no way to achieve this goal with JSON-lib before I can entertain a swap to Jackson, simple-json, or Gson.</p>
 

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