How to reference JSON set as key in Javascript Object

Question

I have a Nodejs lambda function that needs to parse JSON sent to it from an external application. The JSON appears to be malformed and comes in as an object key like so:

 console.log(req.body)

results in:

{ '{"id":"258830096441","time":10}': '' }

What I need is the id and id number, but I am stumped as to how I could parse this.

[Get its key](https://stackoverflow.com/q/6765864/4642212), then parse it as JSON. — Sebastian Simon, Aug 06 '19 at 17:29
req.body is an object. the code just looks like this: exports.main = async function(req, res) { console.log(req.body)} — HodgePodge, Aug 06 '19 at 17:31

Shidersz · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-06T17:43:55.657

If req.body is an object, you can get the first key of the array returned by Object.keys() and then JSON.parse() that key to finally get the id. Like shown on next example:

const obj = { '{"id":"258830096441","time":10}': '' };

let id = JSON.parse(Object.keys(obj)[0]).id;

console.log(id, typeof id); // As string.
console.log(+id, typeof +id); // As number, in case you need the id as number.

.as-console {background-color:black !important; color:lime;}
.as-console-wrapper {max-height:100% !important; top:0;}

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 06 '19 at 17:30

You can parse out the key by doing Object.keys(req.body)[0], which will give you a string, and then you can convert this string to an object by calling JSON.parse on it. The end result would look something like:

let myReqBody = JSON.parse(Object.keys(req.body)[0])

Then you can access the attributes of myReqBody like you normally would:

myReqBody.id

How to reference JSON set as key in Javascript Object

2 Answers2