Trouble decoding Json from Google - php

Question

Well, I'm trying to retrieve some info, from the Google Suggest tool.
The thing is, the json returned after the request, doesn't seem decode-able (using json_decode) + JSONLint sees it as "invalid".
What's wrong?
{
e: "GooDUs7lFIeXO63LgBA",
c: 0,
u: "https://www.google.com/s?gs_rn\x3d24\x26gs_ri\x3dpsy-ab\x26tok\x3dt8ORbtI13MEFLoCQjPSv6w\x26cp\x3d2\x26gs_id\x3d3i\x26xhr\x3dt\x26q\x3dtemplate\x26es_nrs\x3dtrue\x26pf\x3dp\x26safe\x3doff\x26sclient\x3dpsy-ab\x26oq\x3d\x26gs_l\x3d\x26pbx\x3d1\x26bav\x3don.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.\x26bvm\x3dbv.50500085,d.bGE\x26fp\x3dc513cf9c63a02102\x26biw\x3d1304\x26bih\x3d437\x26tch\x3d1\x26ech\x3d20\x26psi\x3dFYkDUs-xCsrT4QTD9YGwDw.1375963413783.1",
p: true,
d: "[\x22template\x22,[[\x22template\\u003cb\\u003es\\u003c\\/b\\u003e\x22,0],[\x22template\\u003cb\\u003e monster\\u003c\\/b\\u003e\x22,0],[\x22template\\u003cb\\u003e c++\\u003c\\/b\\u003e\x22,0],[\x22template\\u003cb\\u003es for pages\\u003c\\/b\\u003e\x22,0]],{\x22t\x22:{\x22bpc\x22:false,\x22tlw\x22:false},\x22q\x22:\x22YjrI_EdhVrEkZrkqZwaGIJ_Ih4c\x22,\x22j\x22:\x223i\x22}]"
}
That's what JSONLint gives as an error :
Parse error on line 1:
{ e: "GooDUs7lFIeXO63L
-----^
Expecting 'STRING', '}'
P.S. Even after editing it like "e": and so on, it still gives out error regarding the value of u and claiming that it was expecting a STRING or NUMBER etc... :S

Answer 1

The code given in the question is not valid JSON.
In order to be valid JSON, it would be required to have the field named in quotes. There are no quotes around the e variable name, or any of the others.
This is what the JSON decoder is complaining about: It is expecting to see "e", not e.
In addition, JSON does not accept the \x escaping format (character reference in hex); it can only use the \u format (unicode character reference in decimal). The code you've provided includes escaped characters in both formats.
The question is, are you using an official Google API? Because they're usually pretty good at providing valid JSON. This isn't valid JSON, so it may be that you're not using the correct API. Another clue is that the variable names aren't very meaningful; offical APIs would normally give more meaningful variable names. If it is the correct API, you should try raising a ticket with Google to fix it; broken JSON is not good, but it should be pretty trivial for them to fix.
Assuming you can't get them to fix it and we can't find an alternative API location that does give valid data, how do we deal with what we've got?
While this code may not be valid JSON, it is valid as a Javascript object (the JSON rules are stricter that those of plain Javascript). It could therefore be run in a Javascript interpreter using eval(), if you trusted it enough for that.
The only other alternativate is to fix the string prior to parsing it so that the variable names are quoted. That's a bit of a pain, but would be do-able if the output was consistent. You'll have problems though if it ever changes (and again, if it's an unofficial API, that could happen at any time without warning).

Answer 2

The problem is with the backslashes in the strings (used for the escape characters)
In PHP 5.4, you can use JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES:
echo json_encode(JSON_STRING, JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES);
Otherwise, you can do the replacement-
str_replace('\\/', '/', json_encode(JSON_STRING));
Since \/ is a valid way to represent /

Answer 3

OK, so this is what I ended up doing (not elegant at all but it works) :
$content = preg_replace_callback(
"(\\\\x([0-9a-f]{2}))i",
function($a) {return chr(hexdec($a[1]));},
$content
);
$content = str_replace("e:","\"e\":",$content);
$content = str_replace("c:","\"c\":",$content);
$content = str_replace("u:","\"u\":",$content);
$content = str_replace("p:","\"p\":",$content);
$content = str_replace("d:","\"d\":",$content);
$content = str_replace("\"[","[",$content);
$content = str_replace("]\"","]",$content);
$content = json_decode($content);