"SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0"
Javascriptnode.jsReactjsJsonRestJavascript Problem Overview
In a React app component which handles Facebook-like content feeds, I am running into an error:
> Feed.js:94 undefined "parsererror" "SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
I ran into a similar error which turned out to be a typo in the HTML within the render function, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
More confusingly, I rolled the code back to an earlier, known-working version and I'm still getting the error.
Feed.js:
import React from 'react';
var ThreadForm = React.createClass({
getInitialState: function () {
return {author: '',
text: '',
included: '',
victim: ''
}
},
handleAuthorChange: function (e) {
this.setState({author: e.target.value})
},
handleTextChange: function (e) {
this.setState({text: e.target.value})
},
handleIncludedChange: function (e) {
this.setState({included: e.target.value})
},
handleVictimChange: function (e) {
this.setState({victim: e.target.value})
},
handleSubmit: function (e) {
e.preventDefault()
var author = this.state.author.trim()
var text = this.state.text.trim()
var included = this.state.included.trim()
var victim = this.state.victim.trim()
if (!text || !author || !included || !victim) {
return
}
this.props.onThreadSubmit({author: author,
text: text,
included: included,
victim: victim
})
this.setState({author: '',
text: '',
included: '',
victim: ''
})
},
render: function () {
return (
<form className="threadForm" onSubmit={this.handleSubmit}>
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Your name"
value={this.state.author}
onChange={this.handleAuthorChange} />
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Say something..."
value={this.state.text}
onChange={this.handleTextChange} />
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Name your victim"
value={this.state.victim}
onChange={this.handleVictimChange} />
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Who can see?"
value={this.state.included}
onChange={this.handleIncludedChange} />
<input type="submit" value="Post" />
</form>
)
}
})
var ThreadsBox = React.createClass({
loadThreadsFromServer: function () {
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
cache: false,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({data: data})
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString())
}.bind(this)
})
},
handleThreadSubmit: function (thread) {
var threads = this.state.data
var newThreads = threads.concat([thread])
this.setState({data: newThreads})
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
type: 'POST',
data: thread,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({data: data})
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
this.setState({data: threads})
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString())
}.bind(this)
})
},
getInitialState: function () {
return {data: []}
},
componentDidMount: function () {
this.loadThreadsFromServer()
setInterval(this.loadThreadsFromServer, this.props.pollInterval)
},
render: function () {
return (
<div className="threadsBox">
<h1>Feed</h1>
<div>
<ThreadForm onThreadSubmit={this.handleThreadSubmit} />
</div>
</div>
)
}
})
module.exports = ThreadsBox
In Chrome developer tools, the error seems to be coming from this function:
loadThreadsFromServer: function loadThreadsFromServer() {
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
cache: false,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({ data: data });
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString());
}.bind(this)
});
},
with the line console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString() underlined.
Since it looks like the error seems to have something to do with pulling JSON data from the server, I tried starting from a blank db, but the error persists. The error seems to be called in an infinite loop presumably as React continuously tries to connect to the server and eventually crashes the browser.
EDIT:
I've checked the server response with Chrome dev tools and Chrome REST client, and the data appears to be proper JSON.
EDIT 2:
It appears that though the intended API endpoint is indeed returning the correct JSON data and format, React is polling http://localhost:3000/?_=1463499798727 instead of the expected http://localhost:3001/api/threads.
I am running a webpack hot-reload server on port 3000 with the express app running on port 3001 to return the backend data. What's frustrating here is that this was working correctly the last time I worked on it and can't find what I could have possibly changed to break it.
Javascript Solutions
Solution 1 - Javascript
The wording of the error message corresponds to what you get from Google Chrome when you run JSON.parse('<...'). I know you said the server is setting Content-Type:application/json, but I am led to believe the response body is actually HTML.
> Feed.js:94 undefined "parsererror" "SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0"
>
> with the line console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString()) underlined.
The err was actually thrown within jQuery, and passed to you as a variable err. The reason that line is underlined is simply because that is where you are logging it.
I would suggest that you add to your logging. Looking at the actual xhr (XMLHttpRequest) properties to learn more about the response. Try adding console.warn(xhr.responseText) and you will most likely see the HTML that is being received.
Solution 2 - Javascript
You're receiving HTML (or XML) back from the server, but the dataType: json is telling jQuery to parse as JSON. Check the "Network" tab in Chrome dev tools to see contents of the server's response.
Solution 3 - Javascript
This ended up being a permissions problem for me. I was trying to access a url I didn't have authorization for with cancan, so the url was switched to users/sign_in. the redirected url responds to html, not json. The first character in a html response is <.
Solution 4 - Javascript
In my case, I was getting this running webpack, and it turned out to be some corruption somewhere in the local node_modules dir.
rm -rf node_modules
npm install
...was enough to get it working right again.
Solution 5 - Javascript
>SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
You are getting an HTML file (or XML) instead of json.
Html files begin with <!DOCTYPE html>.
I "achieved" this error by forgetting the https:// in my fetch method:
fetch(`/api.github.com/users/${login}`)
.then(response => response.json())
.then(setData);
I verified my hunch:
I logged the response as text instead of JSON.
fetch(`/api.github.com/users/${login}`)
.then(response => response.text())
.then(text => console.log(text))
.then(setData);
Yep, an html file.
Solution:
I fixed the error by adding back the https:// in my fetch method.
fetch(`https://api.github.com/users/${login}`)
.then(response => response.json())
.then(setData)
.catch(error => (console.log(error)));
Solution 6 - Javascript
I experienced this error "SyntaxError: Unexpected token m in JSON at position", where the token 'm' can be any other characters.
It turned out that I missed one of the double quotes in the JSON object when I was using RESTconsole for DB test, as {"name: "math"}, the correct one should be {"name": "math"}
It took me a lot effort to figure out this clumsy mistake. I am afraid others would run into similar bummers.
Solution 7 - Javascript
This error occurs when you define the response as application/json and you are getting a HTML as a response. Basically, this happened when you are writing server side script for specific url with a response of JSON but the error format is in HTML.
Solution 8 - Javascript
I was facing the same issue.
I removed the dataType:'json' from the $.ajax method.
Solution 9 - Javascript
Those who are using create-react-app and trying to fetch local json files.
As in create-react-app, webpack-dev-server is used to handle the request and for every request it serves the index.html. So you are getting
>SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0.
To solve this, you need to eject the app and modify the webpack-dev-server configuration file.
You can follow the steps from here.
Solution 10 - Javascript
I my case the error was a result of me not assigning my return value to a variable. The following caused the error message:
return new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize("hello");
I changed it to:
string H = "hello";
return new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(H);
Without the variable JSON is unable to properly format the data.
Solution 11 - Javascript
In my case, for an Azure hosted Angular 2/4 site, my API call to mySite/api/... was redirecting due to mySite routing issues. So, it was returning the HTML from the redirected page instead of the api JSON. I added an exclusion in a web.config file for the api path.
I was not getting this error when developing locally because the Site and API were on different ports. There is probably a better way to do this ... but it worked.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<clear />
<!-- ignore static files -->
<rule name="AngularJS Conditions" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(app/.*|css/.*|fonts/.*|assets/.*|images/.*|js/.*|api/.*)" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false" />
<action type="None" />
</rule>
<!--remaining all other url's point to index.html file -->
<rule name="AngularJS Wildcard" enabled="true">
<match url="(.*)" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false" />
<action type="Rewrite" url="index.html" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
Solution 12 - Javascript
In a nutshell, if you're getting this error or similar error, that means only one thing. That is, in someplace in our codebase we were expecting a valid JSON format to process and we didn't get one. For example:
var string = "some string";
JSON.parse(string)
Will throw an error, saying > Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token s in JSON at position 0
Because, the first character in string is s & it's not a valid JSON now. This can throw error in between also. like:
var invalidJSON= '{"foo" : "bar", "missedquotehere : "value" }';
JSON.parse(invalidJSON)
Will throw error:
VM598:1 Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token v in JSON at position 36
because we intentionally missed a quote in the JSON string invalidJSON at position 36.
And if you fix that:
var validJSON= '{"foo" : "bar", "missedquotehere" : "value" }';
JSON.parse(validJSON)
will give you an object in JSON.
Now, this error can be thrown in any place & in any framework/library. Most of the time you may be reading a network response which is not valid JSON. So steps of debugging this issue can be like:
curlor hit the actual API you're calling.- Log/Copy the response and try to parse it with
JSON.parse. If you're getting error, fix it. - If not, make sure your code is not mutating/changing the original response.
Solution 13 - Javascript
My problem was that I was getting the data back in a string which was not in a proper JSON format, which I was then trying to parse it. simple example: JSON.parse('{hello there}') will give an error at h. In my case the callback url was returning an unnecessary character before the objects: employee_names([{"name":.... and was getting error at e at 0. My callback URL itself had an issue which when fixed, returned only objects.
Solution 14 - Javascript
On a general level this error occurs when a JSON object is parsed that has syntax errors in it. Think of something like this, where the message property contains unescaped double quotes:
{
"data": [{
"code": "1",
"message": "This message has "unescaped" quotes, which is a JSON syntax error."
}]
}
If you have JSON in your app somewhere then it's good to run it through JSONLint to verify that it doesn't have a syntax error. Usually this isn't the case though in my experience, it's usually JSON returned from an API that's the culprit.
When an XHR request is made to an HTTP API that returns a response with a Content-Type:application/json; charset=UTF-8 header which contains invalid JSON in the response body you'll see this error.
If a server-side API controller is improperly handling a syntax error, and it's being printed out as part of the response, that will break the structure of JSON returned. A good example of this would be an API response containing a PHP Warning or Notice in the response body:
<b>Notice</b>: Undefined variable: something in <b>/path/to/some-api-controller.php</b> on line <b>99</b><br />
{
"success": false,
"data": [{ ... }]
}
95% of the time this is the source of the issue for me, and though it's somewhat addressed here in the other responses I didn't feel it was clearly described. Hopefully this helps, if you're looking for a handy way to track down which API response contains a JSON syntax error I've written an Angular module for that.
Here's the module:
/**
* Track Incomplete XHR Requests
*
* Extend httpInterceptor to track XHR completions and keep a queue
* of our HTTP requests in order to find if any are incomplete or
* never finish, usually this is the source of the issue if it's
* XHR related
*/
angular.module( "xhrErrorTracking", [
'ng',
'ngResource'
] )
.factory( 'xhrErrorTracking', [ '$q', function( $q ) {
var currentResponse = false;
return {
response: function( response ) {
currentResponse = response;
return response || $q.when( response );
},
responseError: function( rejection ) {
var requestDesc = currentResponse.config.method + ' ' + currentResponse.config.url;
if ( currentResponse.config.params ) requestDesc += ' ' + JSON.stringify( currentResponse.config.params );
console.warn( 'JSON Errors Found in XHR Response: ' + requestDesc, currentResponse );
return $q.reject( rejection );
}
};
} ] )
.config( [ '$httpProvider', function( $httpProvider ) {
$httpProvider.interceptors.push( 'xhrErrorTracking' );
} ] );
More details can be found in the blog article referenced above, I haven't posted everything found there here as it's probably not all relevant.
Solution 15 - Javascript
Make sure that response is in JSON format otherwise fires this error.
Solution 16 - Javascript
For future googlers:
This message will be generated if the server-side function crashes.
Or if the server-side function doesn't even exist ( i.e. Typo in function name ).
So - suppose you are using a GET request... and everything looks perfect and you've triple-checked everything...
Check that GET string one more time. Mine was:
'/theRouteIWant&someVar=Some value to send'
should be
'/theRouteIWant?someVar=Some value to send'
^
CrAsH ! ( ... invisibly, on the server ...)
Node/Express sends back the incredibly helpful message:
Uncaught (in promise) SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
Solution 17 - Javascript
I had the same error message following a tutorial. Our issue seems to be 'url: this.props.url' in the ajax call. In React.DOM when you are creating your element, mine looks like this.
ReactDOM.render(
<CommentBox data="/api/comments" pollInterval={2000}/>,
document.getElementById('content')
);
Well, this CommentBox does not have a url in its props, just data. When I switched url: this.props.url -> url: this.props.data, it made the right call to the server and I got back the expected data.
I hope it helps.
Solution 18 - Javascript
This might be old. But, it just occurred in angular, the content type for request and response were different in my code. So, check headers for ,
let headers = new Headers({
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
**Accept**: 'application/json'
});
in React axios
axios({
method:'get',
url:'http:// ',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
Accept: 'application/json'
},
responseType:'json'
})
jQuery Ajax:
$.ajax({
url: this.props.url,
dataType: 'json',
**headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
Accept: 'application/json'
},**
cache: false,
success: function (data) {
this.setState({ data: data });
}.bind(this),
error: function (xhr, status, err) {
console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString());
}.bind(this)
});
},
Solution 19 - Javascript
The possibilities for this error are overwhelming.
In my case, I found that the issue was adding the homepage filed in package.json caused the issue.
Worth checking: in package.json change:
homepage: "www.example.com"
to
hompage: ""
Solution 20 - Javascript
Malformed JSON or HTML instead of JSON is the underlying cause of this issue, as described by the other answers, however in my case I couldn't reliably replicate this error, as if the server was sometimes returning valid JSON, and other times returning something else like an HTML error page or similar.
In order to avoid it breaking the page altogether, I resorted to manually trying to parse the returned content, and share it in case it helps anyone else resolve it for them.
const url = "https://my.server.com/getData";
fetch(url).then(response => {
if (!response.ok) return; // call failed
response.text().then(shouldBeJson => { // get the text-only of the response
let json = null;
try {
json = JSON.parse(shouldBeJson); // try to parse that text
} catch (e) {
console.warn(e); // json parsing failed
return;
};
if (!json) return; // extra check just to make sure we have something now.
// do something with my json object
});
});
While this obviously doesn't resolve the root cause of the issue, it can still help to handle the issue a bit more gracefully and take some kind of reasonable action in instances when it fails.
Solution 21 - Javascript
For the React app made by CRA there are two main problems we might face while fetching the JSON data of any <dummy.json>
file.
I have my dummy.json file in my project and am trying to fetch the JSON data from that file but I got two errors:
"SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0 .
I got an HTML file rather than actual JSON Data in the response in the Network tab in Chrome or any browser.
Here are the main two reasons behind that which solved my issue.
- Your JSON data is invalid in your JSON file.
- It might be that the JSON file did not load properly for this so you just restart your React server. This is my issue, within React.
React direct running or access the public folder not the src folder.
How I solved it:
I moved my file into the public folder and access is directly in any file of the src folder.
Making a REST call in the Redux action.js:
export const fetchDummy = ()=>{
return (dispatch)=>{
dispatch(fetchDummyRequest());
fetch('./assets/DummyData.json')
.then(response => {
if (!response.ok) {
throw new Error("HTTP error " + response.status);
}
return response.json();
})
.then(result => {
dispatch(fetchDummySuccess(result))
})
.catch(function (err) {
dispatch(fetchDummyFailure(err))
})
}
}
Solution 22 - Javascript
I got the same error while calling an API in React using the fetch API with the POST method.
Before:
fetch('/api/v1/tour',{
method:"POST",
headers:{"Content-type":"json/application"},
body:JSON.stringify(info)
})
.then((response)=>response.json())
.then((json)=>{
if(json.status === 'success')
alert(json.message)
else
console.log('something went wrong :(')
}).catch(e=>console.log(e))
I resolved the error by changing the headers to {"Content-type":"application/json"}:
After:
fetch('/api/v1/tour',{
method:"POST",
headers:{"Content-type":"application/json"},
body:JSON.stringify(info)
})
.then((response)=>response.json())
.then((json)=>{
if(json.status === 'success')
alert(json.message)
else
console.log('something went wrong :(')
}).catch(e=>console.log(e))
Solution 23 - Javascript
After spending a lot of time with this, I found out that in my case the problem was having "homepage" defined on my package.json file made my app not work on firebase (same 'token' error). I created my react app using create-react-app, then I used the firebase guide on the READ.me file to deploy to github pages, realized I had to do extra work for the router to work, and switched to firebase. github guide had added the homepage key on package.json and caused the deploy issue.
Solution 24 - Javascript
Protip: Testing json on a local Node.js server? Make sure you don't already have something routing to that path
'/:url(app|assets|stuff|etc)';
Solution 25 - Javascript
For me, this happened when one of the properties on the object I was returning as JSON threw an exception.
public Dictionary<string, int> Clients { get; set; }
public int CRCount
{
get
{
var count = 0;
//throws when Clients is null
foreach (var c in Clients) {
count += c.Value;
}
return count;
}
}
Adding a null check, fixed it for me:
public Dictionary<string, int> Clients { get; set; }
public int CRCount
{
get
{
var count = 0;
if (Clients != null) {
foreach (var c in Clients) {
count += c.Value;
}
}
return count;
}
}
Solution 26 - Javascript
just something basic to check, make sure you dont have anything commented out in the json file
//comments here will not be parsed and throw error
Solution 27 - Javascript
In python you can use json.Dump(str) before send result to html template. with this command string convert to correct json format and send to html template. After send this result to JSON.parse(result) , this is correct response and you can use this.
Solution 28 - Javascript
For some, this may help you guys: I had a similar experience with Wordpress REST API. I even used Postman to check if I had the correct routes or endpoint. I later found out that I accidentally put an "echo" inside my script - hooks:
So basically, this means that I printed a value that isn't JSON that is mixed with the script that causes AJAX error - "SyntaxError: Unexpected token r in JSON at position 0"
Solution 29 - Javascript
In my case (backend), I was using res.send(token);
Everything got fixed when I changed to res.send(data);
You may want to check this if everything is working and posting as intended, but the error keeps popping up in your front-end.
Solution 30 - Javascript
In my Case there was problem with "Bearer" in header ideally it should be "Bearer "(space after the end character) but in my case it was "Bearer" there was no space after the character. Hope it helps some one!
Solution 31 - Javascript
If you receive this error in a Chrome extension it can be tough to track down, especially if it occurs when you install the extension. However, I found a way that makes it easier.
I had a Chrome extension that called some scripts from my web server on installation of the plugin, pulling down some default settings. I received the error:
SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0 in _generated_background_page.html
When you get this go into Extensions, find your extension, click the "background page" hyperlink, and the inspector will open for it. Then, go to Network and press CTRL+R. Now, you'll see all the things that the background page had to load.
Click on each one, especially ones that connect back to a remote server. You'll see Headers in the Network tab, followed by a Preview. Look at the Preview for each of the items. If you see something other than the expected header for this data, or you see errors, then that's likely your cause.
In my case, my server script was calling another script and that script had a bug in it because of missing variables at runtime, which then made my application/json header not match with the data it was sending, resulting in the unexpected token error.
Solution 32 - Javascript
In my case, when sending the data in the test API node the JSON object had an extra comma at the end like:
POST http://localhost:9000/api/posts/
Content-Type: application/json
{
"title": "sokka",
"description": "hope this works",
"username": "sokka blog4",
}
so I only needed to remove the extra comma and send this kind of data:
POST http://localhost:9000/api/posts/
Content-Type: application/json
{
"title": "sokka",
"description": "hope this works",
"username": "sokka blog4"
}
I was using the RESTclient extension to test my API.
Solution 33 - Javascript
In most cases, I get this error, when API throws an error with text format. What I suggest is to see the error text content to figure out what is wrong going on.
-
jQuery => set dataType: 'text'
-
fetch => reponse.text() instead of reponse.json()
Solution 34 - Javascript
Check the end point address that you are making the request. If it's misspelled this may be the reason of error because the end point returns HTML
Solution 35 - Javascript
Just to add to the answers, it also happens when your API response includes
<?php{username: 'Some'}
which could be a case when your backend is using PHP.
Solution 36 - Javascript
This might cause due to your javascript code is looking at some json response and you received something else like text.
Solution 37 - Javascript
If anyone else is using fetch from the "Using Fetch" documentation on Web API's in Mozilla: (This is really useful: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API/Using_Fetch)
fetch(api_url + '/database', {
method: 'POST', // or 'PUT'
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
},
body: qrdata //notice that it is not qr but qrdata
})
.then((response) => response.json())
.then((data) => {
console.log('Success:', data);
})
.catch((error) => {
console.error('Error:', error); });
This was inside the function:
async function postQRData(qr) {
let qrdata = qr; //this was added to fix it!
//then fetch was here
}
I was passing into my function qr what I believed to be an object because qr looked like this: {"name": "Jade", "lname": "Bet", "pet":"cat"} but I kept getting syntax errors.
When I assigned it to something else: let qrdata = qr; it worked.
Solution 38 - Javascript
If you try to run this line of code in the console:
JSON.parse(undefined);
you will get the same error message:
"SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0"
Therefore, your app is trying to parse an invalid JSON undefined.
Solution 39 - Javascript
Maybe some permission error would be there just try switching the browser and log in from an authorized account.
Solution 40 - Javascript
> Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
A simple solution to this error is to write a comment in styles.less file.