Escaping '$' character in Description field text inside JSON REST API POST

[Kevin Watson]

My replace function below seems to work for other special characters but cannot get it to work for $ symbol - any advice would be most appreciated as I've tried all variations I can think of and have read so far...

def jsonEscape = {

it.replace("\\","\\\\")

.replaceAll("\r","\\\\r")

.replaceAll("\n","\\\\n")

.replaceAll("\t","\\\\t")

.replaceAll("\"","\\\\\"")

//.replace("\$","\\\\\$") 

}

[Kevin Watson · Accepted solution]

Finally figured this out, so am posting answer in case it helps someone else...

the solution is:

.replace("\$","\\\$")

note 3 backslashes in replace, presumably 2 backslashes to escape then \$ to escape in JSON.

Anyways, it works nicely...

[Tommie Marais]

Good day,

I am new to API's and do not know where to place this portion of the code.

Will you please assist

[Kevin Watson]

Hi Tommie,

its difficult for me to answer properly without knowing what you're trying to achieve. In my case the code was in a groovy file referenced inside a Jira Workflow process step. The first part of the code - see below, is called a Closure in groovy and can be called multiple times in the remainder of the code. I usually place Closure code at the beginning, just after the code to import library files.

//** Removes CR/LF & Tab characters that break the JSON Parser and replaces them with escaped characters **//
def jsonEscape = {
    it.replace("\\","\\\\") // Java Regex needs an escape before backslash to pick up, hence look for \\ but to escape in JSON needs to escape that so \\\\
    .replaceAll("\r","\\\\r") // carriage return
    .replaceAll("\n","\\\\n") // new line
    .replaceAll("\t","\\\\t") // tab
    .replaceAll("\"","\\\\\"") // double quote
    .replace("\$","\\\$") // adds backslash prefix to $ symbol
}

Below are two examples which call the above Closure:

def cleanSummary = jsonEscape(issue.getSummary())
def cleanDescription = jsonEscape(issue.getDescription())

I hope this helps...