How to convert JSON to a Ruby hash

What about the following snippet?

require 'json'
value = '{"val":"test","val1":"test1","val2":"test2"}'
puts JSON.parse(value) # => {"val"=>"test","val1"=>"test1","val2"=>"test2"}

You could also use Rails' with_indifferent_access method so you could access the body with either symbols or strings.

value = '{"val":"test","val1":"test1","val2":"test2"}'
json = JSON.parse(value).with_indifferent_access

then

json[:val] #=> "test"

json["val"] #=> "test"

I'm surprised nobody pointed out JSON's [] method, which makes it very easy and transparent to decode and encode from/to JSON.

If object is string-like, parse the string and return the parsed result as a Ruby data structure. Otherwise generate a JSON text from the Ruby data structure object and return it.

Consider this:

require 'json'

hash = {"val":"test","val1":"test1","val2":"test2"} # => {:val=>"test", :val1=>"test1", :val2=>"test2"}
str = JSON[hash] # => "{\"val\":\"test\",\"val1\":\"test1\",\"val2\":\"test2\"}"

str now contains the JSON encoded hash.

It's easy to reverse it using:

JSON[str] # => {"val"=>"test", "val1"=>"test1", "val2"=>"test2"}

Custom objects need to_s defined for the class, and inside it convert the object to a Hash then use to_json on it.

Assuming you have a JSON hash hanging around somewhere, to automatically convert it into something like WarHog's version, wrap your JSON hash contents in %q{hsh} tags.

This seems to automatically add all the necessary escaped text like in WarHog's answer.