How to filter a string containing round brackets (or parenthesis) while using jsonpath?

Question

js code is ....

var queryString = 'Dolphin Travels (Sagar Travels)';
var results = jsonPath(jsonvar, "$.availableTrips[?("+queryString+")]");

Error :

SyntaxError: jsonPath: unterminated string literal: _v.travels == 'Dolphin Travels (Sagar Travels)

Answer 1

First, let's get some prerequisites figured out:

You are searching 'Dolphin Travels (Sagar Travels)', but I don't see this in your test data (at least that you've shown), so I can't really tell what part of the object/array it is in (whether it is a value or a key).

Here is the sample data I'm working with:

var t = {
    'availableTrips': [
        {
            'busType': 'Volvo A/C-Multi Axle Semi sleeper (2+2)',
            'busTypeId': '101',
            'fares': 250,
            'travels': 'SVR Tours and Travel [Citizen]'
        },
        {
            'busType': 'Lorem Ipsum',
            'busTypeId': '102',
            'fares': 300,
            'travels': 'SVR Tours and Travel [Citizen]'
        }
    ]
}

Simple usage of jsonPath (I'm also assuming you mean this jsonPath library, since you did not specify):

jsonPath(t,'$.availableTrips[?(/SVR/.test(@.travels))]');

Yields the array of objects in the availableTrips array since the string SVR (as a regex) is in both of them.

jsonPath(t,'$.availableTrips[?(/Volvo/.test(@.busType))]');

Yields only the first item in the availableTrips array, equivalent to t.availableTrips[0].

---

Now, to answer your question:

When escaping, you can use a backslash \, but since you are in a string that is interpreted, you'll need to escape it TWICE: \\. Once for the string being sent as a parameter for jsonParse and again as part of the expression being interpreted within jsonParse. Like so:

jsonPath(t,'$.availableTrips[?(/\\(2\\+2\\)/.test(@.busType))]');

Notice that I also had to escape the + quantifier, as well as the ( and ) group metacharacters.

In terms of sanitizing user input, e.g. var queryString = 'Dolphin Travels (Sagar Travels)';, you can perform the following (see What special characters must be escaped in regular expressions?):

var sanitizedQueryString = queryString.replace(/([\.\^\$\*\+\?\(\)\[\{\\\|])/g,'\\$1');