Passing javascript object to ajax

Question

I'm trying to use dynatree, and it can be initialized like this:

var treeData = 
[
    {title: "group1", key:"182" },

    {title: "group2", key:"181" },

    {title: "group3", key:"189" , isFolder:true, children: 
        [
            {title: "group3_1", key:"301" }
        ]
    }
];

$(".groupContainer").dynatree({
    checkbox: false, 
    selectMode: 2,
    children: treeData
});

Notice that the objects in the treeData have values referenced by names that are not quoted.

Now, I want to do this:

var treeData = [];
$.getJSON('/getTreeData.do', function(data){
    treeData = data;
    $(".groupContainer").dynatree({
        checkbox: false, 
        selectMode: 2,
        children: treeData
    });
});

However, jquery 1.7.1 (and 1.5.2 and 1.4.2) raise parse errors when I pass the contents of treeData from getTreeData.do. I believe this is because the specification for JSON requires that keys and values are strings, and are quoted. But if I quote the keys and values, then dynatree will draw a tree with a single node labeled "null".

Is there a way to do this, or will I have to use dynatree's createNode() and addNode() functions a bunch of times after retrieving the tree data?

On a related note, how is a legal javascript object not legal JSON?

Answer 1

I've changed the response type to "text/plain" and ran javascript's eval() on the response. Gee, why didn't I think of that before?