JSON Unescape

Escaped JSON in the wild

Logging libraries, queues, and APIs often store a JSON document as a string. When you copy that value, you get text full of \" and \n that a JSON parser reads as one long string, or rejects. Unescaping removes the escaping and shows the document, formatted and ready to read.

Some systems escape the same value twice, for example a log line that holds a message that holds a payload. Prettify keeps unescaping, up to three times, until it reaches a JSON object or array.

Key features

The tool accepts escaped JSON in the two forms that you usually find.

• A JSON string literal in double quotes, such as "{\"a\":1}".
• Escaped JSON without the outer quotes, such as {\"a\":1}, as many logs print it.
• Text escaped twice or three times.
• Numbers keep the digits they had in the string, so 64-bit IDs stay exact.
• The result is formatted with your JSON indent and opens in the Tree view of the editor.

How to unescape JSON

Unescape in the box on this page, or paste the text straight into the editor. The box takes text up to 512 KB.

1. Paste the escaped text into the box labeled "Paste escaped JSON", or select "Try an example".
2. Read the formatted JSON in the result panel. The summary starts with "Unescaped".
3. Select Copy or Download to keep the result.
4. Select "Open in full editor" to browse the document in the Tree view.
5. If the text is not escaped JSON, the panel says so. Check that you copied the whole value, from the first brace to the last.

Worked example: a log line

A service logged an order as a string. The first block is the text copied from the log, and the second is the result from the box.

The document has three keys and two levels. The total keeps its trailing zero, 19.90, because Prettify writes the number as it was in the string.

{\"level\":\"error\",\"order\":{\"id\":\"A-1001\",\"total\":19.90},\"retry\":true}

{
  "level": "error",
  "order": {
    "id": "A-1001",
    "total": 19.90
  },
  "retry": true
}

Unescape in the editor

The editor unescapes on its own. When you paste or open escaped JSON, the document opens as the JSON it holds, and the message after loading says "The text was escaped JSON, so it opened unescaped." Format detection also reads escaped JSON as JSON, not as YAML or text.

A document that holds a string with JSON in it, for example after a jq query, can be opened with Unescape JSON String in the command palette. History documents always open as they were saved.

Common uses

Escaped JSON turns up wherever one system passes JSON to another as text.

• Read a payload from an application log or a CloudWatch or Datadog log line.
• Inspect a message body copied from a queue such as SQS or Kafka.
• Read a JSON value that an API returns inside a string field.
• Check a fixture that a test stores as a string literal.

Limits to know

The unescaped text must be a JSON object or array. A string that holds a single number, a word, or plain text is not a document, so the tool reports that the text is not escaped JSON.

A JSON string cannot hold a raw line break. If a log wrapped a long line, or a copy added line breaks, join the lines again before you paste. The tool unescapes up to three levels; text escaped more often than that is rare and is left as it is.

Frequently asked questions

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