Hi Perl monks. I'm not exactly sure how to go about this. I have the following JSON data -- currently stored as a scalar:

my $jsonparams =
  qq({ "fields": { "project": {"key": "MCTEST"},"summary": "$summary",
                      "description": "$description",
                      "issuetype": {"name": "Incident"},"customfield_1
+3060": [{"value": "$class1"}, {"value": "$class2"}, {"value": "$class
+3"}]}});
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The $description variable can be quite long, with all sorts of white spaces, line/carriage returns, urls with weird non-ascii information, etc. Basically, I have no idea what it will contain. But I want to basically pass it *all* within json to use with Jira's rest API. I'd like a way to escape everything in the variable so that it can plug into the JSON I have above.

Or... if there is a better way to go about it (almost guaranteed I bet), I would love any advice.

And yes... I know this script is sad.. and frankensteinesque.

Here is what I have so far (more or less):

#! /usr/bin/perl -w
use REST::Client;
use JSON;
use Data::Dumper;
use MIME::Base64;
use URI::Escape;
use strict;

#print Dumper \@ARGV;

my $data = '';

# $data is a temp variable to join all commandline data (@ARGV) -- so 
+that it can be split by special delimitter I invoke from command line
+.
# Example:     /home/user/create-test-ticket.pl "$OPC_MSG.APPLICATION"
+ '^^_^^' "$OPC_MSG.NODE" '^^_^^' "$OPC_MSG.OBJECT" '^^_^^' "$OPC_MSG.
+SEVERITY" '^^_^^' "$OPC_MSG.GROUP" '^^_^^' "$OPC_MSG.MSG_ID" '^^_^^' 
+"$OPC_MSG.RECEIVED" '^^_^^' "$OPC_USER" '^^_^^' "$OPC_MSG.TEXT"
#
# This is to work around shell splitting contents of command line vari
+ables from OVO by spaces.

foreach my $argnum (0 .. $#ARGV)
{
    $data .= $ARGV[$argnum] . " ";
}

#print Dumper $data;

my ($app, $node, $object, $severity, $group, $id, $received, $user, $m
+sg_text) =
  split /\^\^_\^\^/, $data;

# This section is for testing out multiple alert support. WIP .
#my $href; # testing

my @ids = split / /, $id;

if ($#ids > 1)
{

    print
      "Sorry -- this tool doesn's support multiple alerts yet. That wi
+ll be implemented in the next version. \n";
    exit;

}



   my $summary =
        $severity
      . ' ALERT for: '
      . $app
      . ' on : '
      . $node . '( '
      . $object . ' )';




chomp $summary;

my $username = 'user';

my $jiraUrl = 'http://example.jira.com';

my $password = `decrypt.sh "FOOBARFTW!!"`;

chomp $password;

my $headers = {
          Content_Type  => 'application/json',
          Accept        => 'application/json',
          Authorization => 'Basic ' . encode_base64($username . ':' . 
+$password)
};

my $client = REST::Client->new();

$client->setHost($jiraUrl);

my $description = qq(
Application : $app
Node :  $node
OBJECT: $object
SEVERITY : $severity
GROUP :  $group
Submitted by :  $user
Alert Received on : $received
MSG ID : $id
{code}
$msg_text 
{code}
);


# escaping stuff...
$summary =~ s/([^\x20-\x7e])/sprintf '\u%04x', ord($1)/ge;

$description =~ s/([^\x20-\x7e])/sprintf '\u%04x', ord($1)/ge;

my $jsonparams =
  qq({ "fields": { "project": {"key": "MCTEST"},"summary": "$summary",
                      "description": "$description",
                      "issuetype": {"name": "Incident"},"customfield_1
+23060": [{"value": "Foo"}, {"value": "BAR"}, {"value": "CHOO"}]}});

$client->POST('/rest/api/2/issue/', $jsonparams, $headers);


my $res_data = from_json($client->responseContent());


my $issuekey = '';

$issuekey = $res_data->{'key'};

if ($issuekey =~ /TEST/)
{

    print
      qq(Ticket http://example.jira.com/browse/$issuekey created.);

}

else
{

    print " There was a problem. Here are some details: \n";

    print Dumper $client->responseCode();

    print Dumper $client->responseContent();

}
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