Golang Decoding/Unmarshaling invalid unicode in JSON - json

Question

I am fetching JSON files in go that are not formatted homogeneously.
For Example, I can have the following:
{"email": "\"blah.blah#blah.com\""}
{"email": "robert#gmail.com"}
{"name": "m\303\203ead"}
We can see that there will be a problem with the escaping character.
Using json.Decode:
With:
{"name": "m\303\203ead"}
I get the error: invalid character '3' in string escape code
I have tried several approaches to normalise my data for example by passing by a string array (it works but there is too many edge cases), or even to filter escape characters.
Finally, I came through this article: (http://blog.golang.org/normalization)
And the solution they proposed seemed very interesting.
I have tried the following
isMn := func(r rune) bool {
return unicode.Is(unicode.Mn, r)
}
t := transform.Chain(norm.NFC, transform.RemoveFunc(isMn), norm.NFD)
fileReader, err := bucket.GetReader(filename)
transformReader := transform.NewReader(fileReader, t)
decoder := json.NewDecoder(tReader)
for {
var dataModel Model
if err := decoder.Decode(&kmData); err == io.EOF {
break
} else {
// DO SOMETHING
}
}
With Model being:
type Model struct {
Name string `json:"name" bson:"name"`
Email string `json:"email" bson:"email"`
}
I have tried several variations of it, but haven't been able to have it working.
So my question is how to easily handle decoding/unmarshaling JSON data with different encodings? Knowing, that I have no control on those JSON files.
If you are reading this, thank you anyway.

Answer 1

You can use json.RawMessage instead of string, that way json.Decode won't try to decode the invalid characters.
playground : http://play.golang.org/p/fB-38KGAO0
type Model struct {
N json.RawMessage `json:"name" bson:"name"`
}
func (m *Model) Name() string {
return string(m.N)
}
func main() {
s := "{\"name\": \"m\303\203ead\"}"
r := strings.NewReader(s)
d := json.NewDecoder(r)
m := Model{}
fmt.Println(d.Decode(&m))
fmt.Println(m.Name())
}
Edit: Well, you can use regex, not sure how viable that is for you http://play.golang.org/p/VYJKTKmiYm:
func cleanUp(s string) string {
re := regexp.MustCompile(`\b(\\\d\d\d)`)
return re.ReplaceAllStringFunc(s, func(s string) string {
return `\u0` + s[1:]
})
}
func main() {
s := "{\"name\": \"m\303\203ead\"}"
s = cleanUp(s)
r := strings.NewReader(s)
d := json.NewDecoder(r)
m := Model{}
fmt.Println(d.Decode(&m))
fmt.Println(m.Name())
}