Converting circular structure to JSON -- Any way to find what field it is complaining about?

json google-chrome circular-reference
Mike picture Mike · Aug 10, 2011 · Viewed 64.6k times · Source

I'm trying to stringify(...) an object in Chrome, and I keep getting a "Converting circular structure to JSON" message, despite the fact that (as far as I know) no such structure exists.

I've been over the code a dozen times and can't find any circular references whatsoever. Is there any way to get Chrome to tell me what it's bitching about beyond this painfully useless error message?

Answer

Paul picture Paul · Aug 10, 2011

Pardon me if this is too obvious. At the time of writing, I dont know what you have tried.

insert 

console.log(the object);

replacing 'the object' with the object you are passing to JSON.stringify()

insert this line before the JSON.stringify call

and look in the console log (shift control J) for the object. In the console log the object will be tagged with a ">" symbol which can be clicked to expand to the fields.

It is complaining about an object that has pointers into itself, like this kind of object:

A = [];
A[0] = A; 
JSON.stringify(A); // circular error

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