Why is my JSON.parse failing? Ruby on Rails

Question

I'm trying to load images from Flickr's API into a Ruby on Rails app, but I'm getting "Unexpected Token" on my JSON.parse() line.

I found another response here where the returned JSON had it's double quotes escaped out, and the solution was to add the .gsub thing to the end, but I'm still getting an error.

Anyone know what the problem is?

def add

@jsonresults = open("http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.interestingness.getList&api_key=bb398c11934abb6d51bdd720020f6a4a&per_page=1&page=1&format=json&nojsoncallback=1").read
@images = JSON.parse(@jsonresults.to_json.gsub('\"', '"'))

end

The error:

JSON::ParserError in ImagesController#add

757: unexpected token at '"{"photos":{"page":1, "pages":500, "perpage":1, "total":500, "photo":[{"id":"8234011021", "owner":"24066605@N07", "secret":"b4c05df8c5", "server":"8341", "farm":9, "title":"Crescent Lake", "ispublic":1, "isfriend":0, "isfamily":0}]}, "stat":"ok"}"'

Answer 1

The json returned by the call looks fine. Change your parsing to this:

@images = JSON.parse(@jsonresults)

Answer 2

That is not valid JSON. The outer set of double-quotes do not belong. This is the valid version:

'{"photos":{"page":1, "pages":500, "perpage":1, "total":500, "photo":[{"id":"8234011021", "owner":"24066605@N07", "secret":"b4c05df8c5", "server":"8341", "farm":9, "title":"Crescent Lake", "ispublic":1, "isfriend":0, "isfamily":0}]}, "stat":"ok"}'