Jira REST API returns corrupted HTML in the issue description field

Question

Hi everyone,

We're encountering an issue when retrieving issue details using the Jira REST API.

The description field contains HTML-formatted content, but the HTML returned by the API appears to be corrupted or malformed. As a result, I'm unable to correctly parse or render the description.

API : /rest/api/3/issue/{issueIdOrKey}?expand=renderedFields

Corrupted HTML Description ( JSONPATH - $.renderedFields.description ) :

ADF Description ( JSONPATH - $.fields.description ):

This issue seems to be occurring only in some Jira issues.
Can someone please assist with this issue?

Thanks!

Germán Morales · Answer

Thanks, that actually pins it down. The split between working and broken tables is merged cells: a table whose cells use colspan or rowspan is the one that falls back to the ADF-macro placeholder, while plain tables like your Company/Contact one render fine. That's the exact scope of the open bug JRACLOUD-95205, which is also why v2 didn't help: it hits the same renderer gap.

On whether Atlassian has plans, to be clear I'm an Atlassian Partner, not on the Atlassian team, so I can't speak to their roadmap; that ticket is the public place where it's tracked, so watch and vote there. There's no fix inside renderedFields today, so the dependable route is to render those tables from the ADF in $.fields.description: the merged cells are fully described there by each cell's colspan and rowspan, so an ADF renderer reproduces them correctly. You can even special-case it, detecting a table whose cells carry colspan or rowspan and rendering just those from ADF while keeping renderedFields for the simple ones.

zsprints · Answer

@Germán Morales  We tried the old /rest/api/2 endpoint with expand=renderedFields, but still it is returning the same response.

Moreover, there are some tables whose HTML formatted values can be retrieved successfully using the /rest/api/3 api.

HTML description

ADF description

Not every table is broken. Only some tables, appear as broken.
The expand=renderedField was meant to solve this problem, but it looks like it is not solving it properly.

Does Atlassian team have any plans or workarounds for this issue?

Germán Morales · Answer

Hi @zsprints , nothing is actually corrupted, there are two separate things going on:

* The \u003C and \u003E in your output are simply JSON's escaped form of the less-than and greater-than characters; any JSON parser decodes them automatically, so seeing them literally means you're reading the raw string rather than parsed JSON.
* The table is the real issue: v3's renderedFields doesn't render tables to HTML, it inserts that ADF-macro placeholder (the type = 'table' marker) instead, which is why only issues that contain a table look broken. It's a known, documented gap. Render from the ADF in $.fields.description instead, since that is complete and the source of truth, using an ADF renderer that builds your HTML; or as a stopgap, the older /rest/api/2 endpoint with expand=renderedFields covers more node types than v3 does.

Known ticket to watch: JRACLOUD-95205.