title: Why does ng-model in a select return string and not JSON?
body: <p>I have the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;select class="form-control" id="existing-phases" ng-model="selectedPhase"&gt;
      &lt;option disabled selected value&gt;-- select an option --&lt;/option&gt;
      &lt;option ng-repeat="p in existingPhases" value="{{p}}"&gt;{{ p.Name }&lt;/option&gt;
  &lt;/select&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I select an option in my select I was hoping to get the JSON corresponding to the selected phase which should be like this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>{"ID":2,"Name":"Outlook"}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, I'm getting the JSON as a string for some reason:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"{\"ID\":2,\"Name\":\"Outlook\"}"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can I make it so that the ng-model returns the JSON and not a string? </p>
  
  <p>P.S.: I don't want to convert it afterwards in a method, because I know that you can do that with JSON.Parse().</p>
  
  <p>Update:</p>
  
  <p>Debug print:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/kKZ9W.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/kKZ9W.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>