Json encoding being escaped

Question

I'm writing to the db (I'm automatically creating a module):

$module = new stdClass();

$module->title = $moduleTitle;
$module->note = "";
$module->content = "";

$module->position = $modulePosition;
$module->checked_out = 0;

$module->publish_up = "";//current data and time in Y-M-day time e.g.2020-05-26 08:53:56
$module->publish_down = "0000-00-00 00:00:00";
$module->published = 1;
$module->module = $moduleModule;
$module->access = $moduleAccess;
$module->showtitle = 1;
$module->params = $moduleParams;
$module->client_id = 0; //front end module
$module->language = "*";


JFactory::getDbo()->insertObject('#__modules', $module, 'primary_key');

This all works great apart from the $module params. I create them by

$myParams->available_page_groups = '["'.$currentmenuid.'"]';
$myParams->show_page_title = 0;
$myParams->show_page_notes = 0;
$myParams->show_page_owner = 0;
etc.

$myJSON = json_encode($myParams);

Which produces correctly encoded JSON. However when I look in the database the params have been escaped:

{"available_page_groups":"[\"13\"]","show_page_title":0,"show_page_notes":0,...

they should read

{"available_page_groups":"["13"]","show_page_title":0,"show_page_notes":0,...

Can someone tell me how to stop the insertObject adding in the escape characters or is there another way I need to do this - i.e. some sort of raw filter to apply?

thanks

Answer 1

json_encode() is correctly doing its thing. Double quoting is used to isolated keys and values; any double quotes inside of these data points must be escaped to maintain the integrity of the data (otherwise the data structure will break/fail when json decoded).

If you tried to NOT json_encode() the iterable params data, then your code would fail because the params column (which is a VARCHAR(5120)) expects string-type data not an array/object.

The source of the issue comes from the fact that you are baking your own json string manually for available_page_groups. Please never do this. Always declare the complete data structure to be encoded then only json encode the structure one time when finished building it. Your code is effectly encoding a manually encoded string (IOW, double encoding).

If this was my project, here's how I would declare the object:

$module = (object)[
    'title' => $moduleTitle,
    'note' => '',
    'content' => '',
    'position' => $modulePosition,
    'checked_out' => 0,
    'publish_up' => '',
    'publish_down' => '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
    'published' => 1,
    'module' => $moduleModule,
    'access' => $moduleAccess,
    'showtitle' => 1,
    'params' => json_encode([
        'available_page_groups' => [
            $currentmenuid,
        ],
        'show_page_title' => 0,
        'show_page_notes' => 0,
        'show_page_owner' => 0,
        // ... more data
    ]),
    'client_id' => 0, //front end module
    'language' => '*',
];

---

Also, I think you went a little too literal on the primary_key parameter of your insertObject() call. I think the Joomla Docs tricked you: https://docs.joomla.org/Inserting,_Updating_and_Removing_data_using_JDatabase

  /**      * Inserts a row into a table based on an object's properties.  
    *      * @param   string  $table    The name of the database table to insert into.
    *      * @param   object  &$object  A reference to an object whose public properties match the table fields.
    *      * @param   string  $key      The name of the primary key. If provided the object property is updated.
    *      * @return  boolean    True on success.
    *      * @since   11.1
    *      * @throws  RuntimeException
    */
  public function insertObject($table, &$object, $key = null)

You probably want to go with:

JFactory::getDbo()->insertObject('#__modules', $module, 'id');

Since id is the name of the primary_key in the modules table. https://docs.joomla.org/Tables/modules

Answer 2

Save $myParams in array format, not json, i.e. do not json_encode($myParams);