title: Parsing JSON without quoted keys
body: <p>I understand that in JSON, keys are supposed to be surrounded in double quotes. However, I'm using a data source which doesn't quote them, which is causing the Ruby JSON parser to raise an error. Is there any way to perform 'non-strict' parsing?</p>
  
  <p>Example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt; JSON.parse('{name:"hello", age:"23"}')
  JSON::ParserError: 618: unexpected token at '{name:"hello", age:"23"}'
      from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/json-1.1.7/lib/json/common.rb:122:in `parse' 
      from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/json-1.1.7/lib/json/common.rb:122:in `parse'
      from (irb):5
  &gt;&gt; JSON.parse('{"name":"hello", "age":"23"}')
  =&gt; {"name"=&gt;"hello", "age"=&gt;"23"}
  &gt;&gt; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(I tried using a regular expression to add the quotes in before parsing but couldn't get it fully working).</p>