how to parse a string with escaped json using dataweave 2.0

Question

I need to parse the response of an API that is like this:

"[{\"Customers\":[{\"Id\":1607715391563}],\"Partners\":[],\"ModDate\":\"\\/Date(1608031919597)\\/\",\"CreatedByUserId\":null},{\"Message\":null,\"Code\":\"200\",\"NextPage\":1}]"

I wish I have it like this:

[
   {
      "Customers":[
         {
            "Id":1607715391563
         }
      ],
      "Partners":[
         
      ],
      "ModDate":"/Date(1608031919597)/",
      "CreatedByUserId":null
   },
   {
      "Message":null,
      "Code":"200",
      "NextPage":1
   }
]

I already tried to remove the strings using payload[1 to -2] , and parse the JSON using read(payload[1 to -2], 'application/json') . I already tried to follow some tips of this link but neither worked.

EDIT: The point here is that I want to access, for example, Customers.Id value in other connector, and I can't

Answer 1

how about this?

%dw 2.0
output application/json
var inpString = "[{\"Customers\":[{\"Id\":1607715391563}],\"Partners\":[],\"ModDate\":\"\\/Date(1608031919597)\\/\",\"CreatedByUserId\":null},{\"Message\":null,\"Code\":\"200\",\"NextPage\":1}]"
---
read(inpString,"application/json")

Answer 2

You can try the following DataWeave expression:

%dw 2.0
output application/json
---
read((payload replace /^"|"$/ with '') replace '\"' with '"', "application/json")

The first replace will remove heading and trailing double quotes, and the second one will replace back slash scaped double quotes by double quotes.