Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token o

Usage of $.get is not correct since it is an async execution. This should work:

$.get( "states.json", function( obj ) { var states = JSON.parse(obj); }); 

Let's backup and examine what $.get() is. This method is simply a shorthand method for:

$.ajax({ url: url, data: data, success: success, dataType: dataType }); 

See the reference documentation. Now let's jump over to the $.ajax documentation to understand how jQuery parses the return value:

Per the documentation:

dataType (default: Intelligent Guess (xml, json, script, or html))

Type: String

The type of data that you're expecting back from the server. If none is specified, jQuery will try to infer it based on the MIME type of the response (an XML MIME type will yield XML, in 1.4 JSON will yield a JavaScript object, in 1.4 script will execute the script, and anything else will be returned as a string). The available types (and the result passed as the first argument to your success callback) are:

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"xml": Returns a XML document that can be processed via jQuery.

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"html": Returns HTML as plain text; included script tags are evaluated when inserted in the DOM.

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"script": Evaluates the response as JavaScript and returns it as plain text. Disables caching by appending a query string parameter, =[TIMESTAMP], to the URL unless the cache option is set to true. Note: This will turn POSTs into GETs for remote-domain requests.

---

"json": Evaluates the response as JSON and returns a JavaScript object. Cross-domain "json" requests are converted to "jsonp" unless the request includes jsonp: false in its request options. The JSON data is parsed in a strict manner; any malformed JSON is rejected and a parse error is thrown. As of jQuery 1.9, an empty response is also rejected; the server should return a response of null or {} instead. (See json.org for more information on proper JSON formatting.)

---

"jsonp": Loads in a JSON block using JSONP. Adds an extra "?callback=?" to the end of your URL to specify the callback. Disables caching by appending a query string parameter, "=[TIMESTAMP]", to the URL unless the cache option is set to true.

---

"text": A plain text string.

---

multiple, space-separated values: As of jQuery 1.5, jQuery can convert a dataType from what it received in the Content-Type header to what you require. For example, if you want a text response to be treated as XML, use "text xml" for the dataType. You can also make a JSONP request, have it received as text, and interpreted by jQuery as XML: "jsonp text xml". Similarly, a shorthand string such as "jsonp xml" will first attempt to convert from jsonp to xml, and, failing that, convert from jsonp to text, and then from text to xml.

So to sum things up, jQuery will interpret the response using it's intelligent guess method since you didn't specify a return data type. The data type will be inferred as JSON and will be parsed to a JavaScript object. For this reason, you shouldn't ever need to do JSON.parse(...) on the returned data when using a jQuery based ajax method such as $.get, $.post, $.ajax, $.load (the data method, not the event handling suite method) or $.getJSON.

Continuing on, AJAX stands for asynchronous JavaScript and XML. The asynchronous part is key here. The request is operated out of band while JavaScript execution continues on the page starting at the next line. In your case obj will be a $.promise, not the result. Parsing this using JSON.parse will result in an error.

You have two options from here:

1. Wait for the promise to resolve and execute on it using .done().
2. Pass a success callback function to execute upon successful completion of the ajax request.

Both examples are outliend below:

Using .done():

var obj; function fillStates() { $.get('states.json').done(function (data) { obj = data; console.log(obj); }); } 

Using a success callback:

var obj; function fillStates() { $.get('states.json', function (data) { obj = data; console.log(obj); }); } 

Before JSON.parse(), just check typeOf obj==='object'. If true then there is no need to parse as variable is already an object.