ArduinoJson library parsing error

Question

I am trying to retrieve JSON mqtt message I received in ESP32.

void mqttMsgCallback(char* topic, byte* payload, unsigned int length) {
 payload[length] = '0円';
 String _message = String((char*)payload);
 String _topic = String(topic);
 if (_topic.equals("Sys.GetInfo/"+getMacAddr()) == 1)
 {
 Serial.println("Message arrived for sys.GetInfo");
 StaticJsonDocument <256> msg1;
 Serial.println(_message);
 deserializeJson(msg1,_message);
 String callbackTopic = msg1["callbackTopic"];
 Serial.println(callbackTopic);
 }
}

The issue is when I publish mosquitto_pub -t "Sys.GetInfo/2462ABFC2CD0" -m "{"callbackTopic" : "1234"}" it works well like callbackTopic as 1234.

but when I publish mosquitto_pub -t "Sys.GetInfo/2462ABFC2CD0" -m "{"callbackTopic" : "xyz"}" it prints callbackTopic value as null. Please point me if I an missing something.

Arduino version 1.8.15 ArduinoJson : 6.18.2 Borad : ESP32

Thanks

• Majenko: Check the return value of deserializeJson() to see if it can even parse it as valid JSON. Maybe you need '{"callbackTopic" : "xyz"}' (single quotes round the outside) to preserve the quotes on the inside.
• Abhishek bhatia: @Majenko it works when i publish like '{"callbackTopic" : "xyz"}'. Thanks why the message with "" works when callbackTopic value is numeric
• Majenko: Probably because the value is numeric. 1234 is a valid "thing" - xyz isn't. "xyz" is, though, and if your shell is stripping the " because it's not either escaped or encapsulated within single quotes, then it can't parse xyz as a valid "thing".
• Juraj: payload[length] = '0円'; how do you know there is a length + 1 position available?

Answer 1

Your shell is stripping the " from inside the string. If you run the command:

$ echo "{"callbackTopic" : "xyz"}"

you get:

{callbackTopic : xyz}

so you see all the quotes are stripped. xyz isn't something that ArduinoJSON can parse. But 1234 is, so with the quotes stripped it's still considered valid.

You need to ensure the quotes aren't removed. There's two ways of doing this: escaping them, or encapsulating the string in single quotes which gives a more "literal" interpretation of the contents than double quotes:

Escaping:

"{\"callbackTopic\" : \"xyz\"}"

Single quotes:

'{"callbackTopic" : "xyz"}'

Either of those when used as a parameter to a command work - like:

$ echo '{"callbackTopic" : "xyz"}'
{"callbackTopic" : "xyz"}

Answer 2

To parse an ArduinoJSON one simply needs to

 String JSONpayload = "some JSON here";
 StaticJsonDocument <512> geoLocationInfoJson;
 DeserializationError error = deserializeJson(geoLocationInfoJson, JSONpayload);
 if (error) {
 this->mserial->printStrln("Error deserializing JSON");
 }

To use the values within the StaticJsonDocument one first needs to

if ( geoLocationInfoJson.isNull() == true ){
 String dataStr="NULL geoLocation data.\n";
 Serial.print( dataStr); 
 return true;
}

next, is required to verify if a key exists. If TRUE, then is mandatory first to get the desired value into a corresponding data type, like below, and only afterward work on it, for instance, send it as a BLE message string:

if(this->interface->geoLocationInfoJson.containsKey("lat")){
 float lat = this->interface->geoLocationInfoJson["lat"];
 dataStr += "Latitude: "+ String(lat,4) + "\n";
}
if(this->interface->geoLocationInfoJson.containsKey("lon")){
 float lon = this->interface->geoLocationInfoJson["lon"];
 dataStr += "Longitude: "+ String(lon,4) + "\n";
}
if(this->interface->geoLocationInfoJson.containsKey("regionName"))
 dataStr += String(this->interface->geoLocationInfoJson["regionName"].as<char*>()) + ", "; 

The full code above is available on this GitHub repository:

https://github.com/aeonSolutions/aeonlabs-ESP32-C-Base-Firmware-Libraries

• Juraj: what question does this answer?
• Miguel Tomás: The one of successfully parsing an arduinojson object. And access key, value pairs it holds
• Juraj: that is not the question asked on top of this page
• Miguel Tomás: Read between the lines ?
• Juraj: the existing accepted answer shows what the problem was