Resolving JSON Parsing Error in Import Function Implementation

The import endpoint <http://localhost:8108/collections/companies/documents/import?action=create>
returns

{"code":400,"document":"{\"id\": \"124\",\"company_name\": \"Stark Industries\",\"num_employees\": \"5215\",\"country\": \"USA\"}","error":"Field `num_employees` must be an int32.","success":false}

for the request body

{"id": "124","company_name": "Stark Industries","num_employees": "5215","country": "USA"}

which is fine except it is not valid JSON. I'm just implementing import function and the code is supposed to throw ImportError but if fails before that due to parsing failure. It should return something like this:

{
  "code": 400,
  "document": {
    "id": "124",
    "company_name": "Stark Industries",
    "num_employees": "5215",
    "country": "USA"
  },
  "error": "Field `num_employees` must be an int32.",
  "success": false
}

Import end point returns JSON lines as response, where each JSON line records the result of the import operation for the corresponding import record. (i.e. line 1 of response matches line 1 of request and so on)

Yep but the response is not valid JSON

I don't follow you.

{"code":400,"document":"{\"id\": \"124\",\"company_name\": \"Stark Industries\",\"num_employees\": \"5215\",\"country\": \"USA\"}","error":"Field `num_employees` must be an int32.","success":false}

is valid JSON.

Yep just checked it myself, it's valid json

Harpreet Double escaping seems to work for me. E.g.

var str = '{"code":400,"error":"Field `num_employees` must be an int32.","success":false, "document": "{\\"id\\": 100}"}'

JSON.parse(str)

Kishore Nallan Yes. I believe you'll be updating the server response?

Yes, I will fix the server response. Are you saying that the JS client is broken at the moment because of this issue? i.e. when the import has bad data, the JS client fails with JSON parsing error?

nah I was implementing a unit test for import function in dart client and found this error. I'll just update my test case to have response with double escaped quotes and assume that's how the response will be in the future.

Harpreet Actually, I think the current behaviour of single backslash is correct. Try this on Node:

var fs = require('fs');
var file_path = '/tmp/obj.json';

var str = '{"age":1}';
var obj = {};
obj['person'] = str;

fs.writeFileSync(file_path, JSON.stringify(obj));

var objstr = fs.readFileSync(file_path, {encoding:'utf8', flag:'r'});
var obj2 = JSON.parse(objstr)

console.log(obj2);

Now I understand why an exception was being raised.

import 'dart:convert';

void main() {
  final str = '{"age": 1}',
        obj = {'person': str},
        encoded = json.encode(obj);
        
  print('original: $obj');
  print('encoded object: $encoded');
  print('decoded object: ${json.decode(encoded)}');

  final myEncoded = '{"person":"{\"age\": 1}"}';
  print(json.decode(myEncoded));
}

The first three print work fine and output:

original: {person: {"age": 1}}
encoded object: {"person":"{\"age\": 1}"}
decoded object: {person: {"age": 1}}

The last print causes the following exception:

Unhandled exception:
FormatException: Unexpected character (at character 14)
{"person":"{"age": 1}"}
             ^

Seems like I cannot pass in the encoded string manually. Talk about being fair :3

Oh wait, scratch that.

the single quotes is just syntactic sugar iirc, when the vm deals with the strings it converts them to "

I'm not familiar with Dart, but do you understand what's happening or do you need any further help here?

Nope. I'll handle it. Thank you for your time 🙂