geode-docs/tools_modules/gfsh/json_in_gfsh.html.md.erb

---
title:  Specifying JSON within Command-Line Options
---

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Some `gfsh` commands allow JSON specifications within some options.
These JSON strings specify initialization properties in the form of
key/value pairs.

A JSON string is appended to a fully qualified class name,
for those classes that implement the `Declarable` interface.
The parameter to the interface's `init` method is an
object that contains initialization properties.
The JSON string is parsed and broken into a set of
property names and values that define the object. 

The specification of a cache loader class in the `gfsh create region`
command may have a JSON specification.
For example,

```
gfsh>create region --name=region1 --type=PARTITION \
   --cache-loader=com.example.Setup{'k1':'v1','k2':'v2','k3':'v3'} 
```

The JSON string in this example is

``` pre
{'k1':'v1','k2':'v2','k3':'v3'} 
```

The JSON string is surrounded by curly braces, and the pairs
are separated by commas.  
Each pair is separated by a colon.
Each of the two strings that define a pair
is enclosed with single or double quote characters.
Be consistent throughout the JSON string in the use of
either single or double quote characters.

Space characters separate `gfsh` command-line options,
and the tokenizing of the options occurs before the parsing
of JSON strings.
If the value within the command-line option contains a space,
delimit it with double quote marks.

As an example, assume that there is a single pair, and the
value of the pair is `value with space`.
The right-hand side of the `--cache-loader` example option becomes

```
gfsh>create region --name=region2 --type=PARTITION \
   --cache-loader="com.example.Setup{'k1':'value with space'}" 
```

To incorporate a single quote character within a value,
escape it with two backslash characters.
For example,

```
gfsh>create region --name=region3 --type=PARTITION \
   --cache-loader="com.example.Setup{'k1':'property\\'s value'}" 
```

The value of the pair is `property's value`.