parse Javascript json into php - php

Question

Here is my Json. This ia an dwr response ( a webservice created in java) .
{
key1 : {
date : "Today" ,
items : [
{
itemKey1 : "itemValue1",
itemKey2 : "itemValue2",
},
{
itemKey1 : "itemValue1",
itemKey2 : "itemValue2",
},
]
}
}
JSON LINT is also showing the error.
If you can see key do not have "" may be that's why i can not parse it to json in php directly. Is there any way oi can parse it to json and then to array or directly to an array.
But when i transfor this to this type of json it. In JSON LINT it shows that it is proper json.
{
"key1": {
"date": "Today",
"items": [
{
"itemKey1": "itemValue1",
"itemKey2": "itemValue2"
},
{
"itemKey1": "itemValue1",
"itemKey2": "itemValue2"
}
]
}
}
So is there anyway i can trasnfer json to second type. Dynamically in PHP

Answer 1

Since there is no javascript parser build in to PHP and what you have here is JAVASCRIPT and not JSON, your only options is really to implement your own parser / use an existing parser. OR wrangle your string into being JSON, this COULD be done with something like regex, though it will most likely be flaky.
For your specified example data, this would do:
<?php
$data = json_decode(preg_replace_callback('#(\S+)\s*:#i', function($matches){
return '"'.$matches[1].'" :';
},$str));