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System.JSONException: Unexpected character ('i' (code 105)): was expecting comma to separate OBJECT entries at [line:1, column:18]

#SalesforceChallenge

I'm trying to escape a string but I had no success so far.

This is the response body I'm getting:

{"text":"this \"is something\" I wrote"}
Please note that there are 2 backslashes to escape the double quotes char. (This is a sample. Actually I have a big to escape with lots of "text" elements.)
When I try to deserialize it I get the following error:
System.JSONException: Unexpected character ('i' (code 105)): was expecting comma to separate OBJECT entries at [line:1, column:18]
I've tried to escape by using:
String my = '{"text":"this \"is something\" I wrote"}';
System.debug('test 0: ' + my);
System.debug('test 1: ' + my.replace('\"', '-'));
System.debug('test 2: ' + my.replace('\\"', '-'));
System.debug('test 3: ' + my.replace('\\\"', '-'));
System.debug('test 4: ' + my.replace('\\\\"', '-'));
--- Results:
[22]|DEBUG|test 0: {"text":"this "is something" I wrote"}
[23]|DEBUG|test 1: {-text-:-this -is something- I wrote-}
[23]|DEBUG|test 1: {-text-:-this -is something- I wrote-}
[24]|DEBUG|test 2: {"text":"this "is something" I wrote"}
[25]|DEBUG|test 3: {"text":"this "is something" I wrote"}
[26]|DEBUG|test 4: {"text":"this "is something" I wrote"}
--- What I need as result:
{"text":"this -is something- I wrote"}
Please, does someone has any fix to share?
Thanks a lot.
This is the problem with your test runs in Anonymous Apex:
String my = '{"text":"this \"is something\" I wrote"}';
Because \ is an escape character, you need two backslashes in an Apex string literal to produce a backslash in the actual output:
String my = '{"text":"this \\"is something\\" I wrote"}';
Since Apex quotes strings with ', you don't have to escape the quotes for Apex; you're escaping them for the JSON parser.
The same principle applies to the strings you're trying to use to do replacements: you must escape the \ for Apex.
All that said, it's unclear why you are trying to manually alter this string. The payload
{"text":"this \"is something\" I wrote"}
is valid JSON. In general, you should not perform string replacement on inbound JSON structures in Apex unless you're attempting to compensate for a payload that contains an Apex reserved word as a key so that you can use typed deserialization.
                Hi David. Thanks for replying. I tried to show the string variable without replacing anything. This was the output:     {"text":"this "is something" I wrote"}  When I try to deserialize I get an error: Map<String, String> test = (Map<String, String>) JSON.deserialize(my, Map<String, String>.class);  Error:     System.JSONException: Unexpected character ('i' (code 105)): was expecting comma to separate OBJECT entries at [line:1, column:17]
– Israel Agostinho
                Feb 6, 2021 at 5:18
        
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