OpenLayers.Format.GeoJSON throws an exception “SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character” for valid JSON

Question

In my GeoExt client, I have the following line that retrieves JSON data from a web service into a FeatureStore:

var store = new GeoExt.data.FeatureStore({
        layer: route_layer,
        fields: [
            {name: "length"}
        ],
        proxy: new GeoExt.data.ProtocolProxy({
            protocol: new OpenLayers.Protocol.HTTP({
                url: "./php/pgrouting.php",
                format: new OpenLayers.Format.GeoJSON({
                    internalProjection: epsg_900913,
                    externalProjection: epsg_4326
                })
            })
        })
    });

When this code is executed, Firebug reports the error SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character, even though the JSON returned by the web service is valid (I've confirmed this against http://jsonlint.com). The response header has been configured accordingly with the line header('Content-type: application/json',true);.

Anyone who might have encountered this issue before, please assist. I've waded around, but no luck yet.

UPDATE: Sample JSON output is at http://pastebin.com/LPLjBDgp. It's valid JSON, but the error SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character persists. I've even updated my html page by adding the following line <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/> in an attempt to restrict character encoding.

Answer 1

JSON provided above looks like pretty print json. Does you get response from web server in such formatting form? JSON.parse works with valid string, but pretty print json - is not valid for JSON.parse.

Answer 2

Try it in chrome, it will tell you what the character is when I run your data though something to make it a valid string and try to parse it in chrome I get

message: "Unexpected token ↵"

but you said the new lines aren't in the original so that message doesn't apply to you.