Retrieve values from JSON - can escaped characters be retrieved/preserved?

Mitch Dale

Hey @Product, I have a WF that gets data via an API call from one platform, and then posts said data into another platform via another API call. I use a 'Retrieve values from JSON' WA to initialize multiple variables to be passed into the second API call request body. On very rare instances, values from the data retrieved from the first API contains quotations, e.g.

{ "Key": " \"Value\"" }

This results in my variable having quotations, i.e. "Value", which results in an error when trying to pass it into the second API call. Is there any way I could keep the characters escaped when retrieving them via the 'Retrieve values from JSON' WA? Otherwise I'll have to do a text replace for each of the variables retrieved which is not ideal.

david

That sounds like a quirk in the data from your first API. Technically, the system is doing the right thing to give you the data with the escape chars. Escape chars are added as a backend mechanism, so the data you received form the 1st API is "Value".

I believe you will have to replace those characters.

Nick

Hey Mitch,

This comes up quite a bit. It's good that you're catching it early. A few ways to handle it are:

Instead of building your payload JSON inside your second API call, build it in the "Convert text to JSON" Wrk Action. It will handle the escaping for you of the most common reasons for these failures.
As you said, you can use the replace with regex WA or the Text replace Wrk Actions to escape the individual characters.

We have some features coming up which will mean you don't need to do these edits yourself but for now the above are the best two options.