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Gin Web Framework

PureJSON

Normally, Go’s json.Marshal replaces special HTML characters with unicode escape sequences for safety — for example, < becomes \u003c. This is fine when embedding JSON in HTML, but if you are building a pure API, clients may expect the literal characters.

c.PureJSON uses json.Encoder with SetEscapeHTML(false), so HTML characters like <, >, and & are rendered literally instead of being escaped.

Use PureJSON when your API consumers expect raw, unescaped JSON. Use the standard JSON when the response might be embedded in an HTML page.

package main


import (
  "net/http"


  "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
)


func main() {
  router := gin.Default()


  // Standard JSON -- escapes HTML characters
  router.GET("/json", func(c *gin.Context) {
    c.JSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{
      "html": "<b>Hello, world!</b>",
    })
  })


  // PureJSON -- serves literal characters
  router.GET("/purejson", func(c *gin.Context) {
    c.PureJSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{
      "html": "<b>Hello, world!</b>",
    })
  })


  router.Run(":8080")
}

Test it

Terminal window
# Standard JSON -- HTML characters are escaped
curl http://localhost:8080/json
# Output: {"html":"\u003cb\u003eHello, world!\u003c/b\u003e"}


# PureJSON -- HTML characters are literal
curl http://localhost:8080/purejson
# Output: {"html":"<b>Hello, world!</b>"}

See also