It turned out that you could use the html escaped characters in the element data
attribute to have json-like array (encoded are quotes):
<div id="demo" data-stuff='["some", "string", "here"]'></div>
And then in javascript get it without any additional magic:
var ar = $('#demo').data('stuff');
Check this fiddle out.
Edited (2017)
You don't need to use html escaped characters in the data
attribute.
<div id="demo" data-stuff='["some", "string", "here"]'></div>
Check this new fiddle out.