Safely decode and format escaped JSON in your browser.
Ever encountered JSON that looks broken—full of backslashes and escaped quotes? That's stringified JSON: valid JSON that's been serialized and wrapped inside another string. APIs, logs, webhooks, and database exports often return data in this escaped format. Our tool detects, parses, and formats these serialized JSON values into clean, readable output—all processed client-side for complete privacy.
🔄 Convert JSON String Now ↓When JSON is stored as a string inside another data structure, it gets "escaped"—quotes become backslash-quote, and the entire JSON is wrapped in outer quotes. Here's what that looks like and how our formatter fixes it:
"[{\"id\":1,\"name\":\"Tom Cruise\",\"age\":61},{\"id\":2,\"name\":\"Justin Timberlake\",\"age\":42},{\"id\":3,\"name\":\"Elon Musk\",\"age\":52}]"
[
{
"id": 1,
"name": "Tom Cruise",
"age": 61
},
{
"id": 2,
"name": "Justin Timberlake",
"age": 42
},
{
"id": 3,
"name": "Elon Musk",
"age": 52
}
]
\" sequences converted back to regular
quotesJSON.parse() to validate
structureConverting a JSON string back to formatted JSON involves several steps. Our tool handles this automatically:
\" are converted
back to their original characters.100% Client-Side: All processing happens in your browser using JavaScript. No data is ever sent to a server, making it safe for API keys, tokens, and sensitive configuration data.
JSON strings appear in many common development scenarios. Here's where you'll typically find them:
Some APIs return JSON data as a string within another JSON wrapper. This is common when an API proxies data from another service or when response bodies are stored as text fields.
Application logs often serialize JSON objects as strings for single-line storage. When you copy these from log viewers or monitoring tools, they contain escaped characters.
Databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite sometimes store JSON as text strings rather than native JSON types. Exporting or querying these fields returns escaped JSON.
Webhook services like Stripe, GitHub, and Slack often include nested JSON as string fields within their payloads, especially for metadata or custom attributes.
Copying JSON from HTML attributes, JavaScript variables, or formatted log output often includes escape sequences that weren't visible in the source.
Our JSON formatter includes automatic detection for JSON strings. Here's what to expect:
The formatter also fixes common issues like trailing commas and single quotes while processing your JSON string.
Understanding the difference between a JSON string and a JSON object is essential for debugging data issues:
A JSON object is a structured data format that JavaScript (and most languages) can work with directly. It has proper key-value pairs, arrays, and nested structures. When you work with API data in code, you're typically handling JSON objects.
A JSON string is a JSON object that has been converted to plain text using JSON.stringify().
This serialization adds outer quotes and escapes internal special characters. It's commonly used for:
When you receive stringified JSON instead of a JSON object, calling methods like .map() or
accessing properties will fail. You first need to parse the string back into an object using
JSON.parse()—which is exactly what our converter does automatically.
A JSON string is valid JSON data that has been serialized and wrapped inside another string. This process escapes internal quotes with backslashes and adds outer quotes, making the JSON look "broken" until it's properly parsed.
Backslashes appear when JSON is serialized as a string value. The serialization process must escape special characters—particularly double quotes—so they don't break the outer string. This is normal behavior, not corruption.
Use JSON.parse() to convert a JSON string back to a JSON object. Our formatter does this
automatically—just paste your escaped JSON and click Convert. The tool removes outer quotes, unescapes
characters, and formats the result.
Yes and no. A single JSON.parse() call handles standard stringified JSON. However, if JSON
was double-encoded (stringified twice), you'll need to call JSON.parse() twice. Our tool
automatically detects double-encoding and applies the correct number of parse operations.
Yes, when using client-side tools like ours. All processing happens in your browser—your data never touches a server. This makes it safe for API keys, tokens, and any sensitive configuration data.
Explore our other JSON tools for different formatting and validation needs:
Parse escaped JSON strings and format them instantly with our free online tool.
Convert JSON String Now ↑