Hello Tony,

one common error of newcommer is the usage of wrong JSON format or incorrect usage of jsonReader. Two formats are very common:

1) jsonReader: {repeatitems: false}. One produces the data in the format, but don't includes jsonReader: {repeatitems: false} as jqGrid option. One could include simple test whether items which represent the row as array or not. Directly after reading of root element (see here) or later