Error message about unexpected symbol while creating JSON with fromJSON

It’s probably an easy thing, but I’m struggling a lot with creating a simple JSON file with a simple text input. Form teh error message it’s clear that I’md oding sth. wrong with quotes, but I’ve no idea what.

library(jsonlite)

# Create an example
jsoncars <- toJSON(mtcars[1:2,], pretty=TRUE)
jsoncars

This gives:

[
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.62,
    "qsec": 16.46,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4"
  },
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.875,
    "qsec": 17.02,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4 Wag"
  }
]

Now, I’m copying this very same text into fromJSON:

fromJSON("[
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.62,
    "qsec": 16.46,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4"
  },
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.875,
    "qsec": 17.02,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4 Wag"
  }
]")

And I’m getting the following error:

Error: unexpected symbol in:
"      {
        "mpg"
Execution halted

BTW, doing fromJSON(jsoncars) works, but it still doesn’t solve my problem.

Any ideas?

>Solution :

Use ' to differentiate from " in JSON text :

jsonlite::fromJSON('[
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.62,
    "qsec": 16.46,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4"
  },
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.875,
    "qsec": 17.02,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4 Wag"
  }
]')

              mpg cyl disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
Mazda RX4      21   6  160 110  3.9 2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
Mazda RX4 Wag  21   6  160 110  3.9 2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4

Another option is the new R>=4.0 raw character string syntax r"(...)":

jsonlite::fromJSON(r"([
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.62,
    "qsec": 16.46,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4"
  },
  {
    "mpg": 21,
    "cyl": 6,
    "disp": 160,
    "hp": 110,
    "drat": 3.9,
    "wt": 2.875,
    "qsec": 17.02,
    "vs": 0,
    "am": 1,
    "gear": 4,
    "carb": 4,
    "_row": "Mazda RX4 Wag"
  }
])")