JSON with backslash for CURL. Not able to generate Apex request class

Question

I have a request JSON that other system has given to use. It looks like below:

{
  \"list\": [
    {
      \"m1\": \"tval\",
      \"fill\": {
        \"tool\": \"4535\"
      },
      \"respfield\": [
        \"tid\",
        \"tName\"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Note that it has back slash in front of every key and value. I am unable to parse it directly in https://jsonformatter.org/ with back slashes. When I remove the back slashes and format the JSON I get:

{
  "list": [
    {
      "m1": "tval",
      "fill": {
        "tool": "4535"
      },
      "respfield": [
        "tid",
        "tName"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

I used curl command to hit the service with back slash JSON -> returns a response and without back slash JSON- which returns error. My question is how can I use the JSON with back slash to generate an Apex request class that I can serialize. Should I be using the one without back slashes( but the service retruns error when used with curl command)? would JSON serialize and curl behave differently?

Answer 1

When you invoke curl from the command line, you have to escape any double quotes that you include within any quoted string. The escaped quotes are interpreted by your shell (probably bash), not by curl itself or by your remote service.

Your "real" outgoing JSON shouldn't include any backslashes. You should only have those present when you're embedding a JSON payload inside an outer quoted string in a context like bash or many other scripting languages.