How to unmarshal an escaped JSON string

You need to fix this in the code that is generating the JSON.

When it turns out formatted like that, it is being JSON encoded twice. Fix that code that is doing the generating so that it only happens once.

Here's some JavaScript that shows what's going on.

// Start with an object
var object = {"channel":"buu","name":"john", "msg":"doe"};

// serialize once
var json = JSON.stringify(object); // {"channel":"buu","name":"john","msg":"doe"}

// serialize twice
json = JSON.stringify(json); // "{\"channel\":\"buu\",\"name\":\"john\",\"msg\":\"doe\"}"

You might want to use strconv.Unquote on your JSON string first :)

Here's an example, kindly provided by @gregghz:

package main

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "strconv"
)

type Msg struct {
    Channel string
    Name string
    Msg string
}

func main() {
    var msg Msg
    var val []byte = []byte(`"{\"channel\":\"buu\",\"name\":\"john\", \"msg\":\"doe\"}"`)

    s, _ := strconv.Unquote(string(val))

    err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(s), &msg)

    fmt.Println(s)
    fmt.Println(err)
    fmt.Println(msg.Channel, msg.Name, msg.Msg)
}