Hi i have an issue with my current project where some of the json messages i recieve have escaped qu...

# serialization

[Tower Guidev2]

Hi
i have an issue with my current project where some of the json messages i recieve have escaped quotes

"metaData":"{ \"source\":\"Urol. Oncol\"}",

how can i pre process this json content to remove the backslashes?
i thought i could employ a custom serializer for this specific field
however i cannot see how to achieve this
is it possible to remove these backslashes?

[Adam S]

Crikey, that’s an unusual problem. I don’t think KxS can help with that.

I think you’d have to do some string manipulation before decoding it. If none of the strings contain \" then it’s an easy find-replace, if they might, then it’s a lot more tricky.

If you can replace every \" with ", maybe lenient parsing will be able to handle it.

What’s producing the invalid JSON?

[Tower Guidev2]

@Adam S thanks for looking at this,
thats what thought, the invalid json is produced by my organisations backend
currenlty the only client is a javascript web site which doesnt seem to mind this data

[Adam S]

any solution on your end will be 10 times more difficult than fixing the problematic backend :)

[Adam S]

if you’re using Kotlin/JVM then maybe you could use the same JS parser https://stackoverflow.com/a/22856530/4161471 to parse the invalid-JSON, and return some valid JSON

[Tower Guidev2]

I have requested they fix the backend, however i am not holding my breath 😄
the solution i employed was to treat the invalid json as a basic string
then "parse" it using JSONObject into valid json to store in my database

[Adam S]

i am not holding my breath 😄

I know that feeling! Sounds like you’ve found a good workaround