JSON.stringify without quotes on properties?

This simple regular expression solution works to unquote JSON property names in most cases:

const object = { name: 'John Smith' };
const json = JSON.stringify(object);  // {"name":"John Smith"}
console.log(json);
const unquoted = json.replace(/"([^"]+)":/g, '$1:');
console.log(unquoted);  // {name:"John Smith"}

Extreme case:

var json = '{ "name": "J\\":ohn Smith" }'
json.replace(/\\"/g,"\uFFFF");  // U+ FFFF
json = json.replace(/"([^"]+)":/g, '$1:').replace(/\uFFFF/g, '\\\"');
// '{ name: "J\":ohn Smith" }'

Special thanks to Rob W for fixing it.

Limitations

In normal cases the aforementioned regexp will work, but mathematically it is impossible to describe the JSON format with a regular expression such that it will work in every single cases (counting the same number of curly brackets is impossible with regexp.) Therefore, I have create a new function to remove quotes by formally parsing the JSON string via native function and reserialize it:

function stringify(obj_from_json) {
    if (typeof obj_from_json !== "object" || Array.isArray(obj_from_json)){
        // not an object, stringify using native function
        return JSON.stringify(obj_from_json);
    }
    // Implements recursive object serialization according to JSON spec
    // but without quotes around the keys.
    let props = Object
        .keys(obj_from_json)
        .map(key => `${key}:${stringify(obj_from_json[key])}`)
        .join(",");
    return `{${props}}`;
}

Example: https://jsfiddle.net/DerekL/mssybp3k/

It looks like this is a simple Object toString method that you are looking for.

In Node.js this is solved by using the util object and calling util.inspect(yourObject). This will give you all that you want. follow this link for more options including depth of the application of method. http://nodejs.org/api/util.html#util_util_inspect_object_options

So, what you are looking for is basically an object inspector not a JSON converter. JSON format specifies that all properties must be enclosed in double quotes. Hence there will not be JSON converters to do what you want as that is simply not a JSON format.Specs here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Using_native_JSON

Object to string or inspection is what you need depending on the language of your server.

JSON.stringify without quotes on properties?

Limitations

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