topic Re: How to encode a JSON string in Arcade in Developers Questions

How to encode a JSON string in Arcade

JeffSilberberg — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 16:31:35 GMT

Good morning,

I am looking to see how to implement a toJSON() function properly, escaping the information as needed. I know we have a proper fromJSON() in Arcade, but I am trying to feed a Webhook, and on rare occasions, the post fails due to what appears to be improperly escaped text strings.

"UrlEncode(textOrDictionary) -> Text" is different from JSON escaping.

TIA --

Re: How to encode a JSON string in Arcade

DavidSolari — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:19:33 GMT

If you need to implement this yourself you'll have to search for "JSON Stringify" and see if you can find an implementation to copy. Doing a serializer 100% to spec is a daunting task (and might not even be possible at an acceptable speed in Arcade) but it'll give you a lead on the type of data you need to parse to meet your requirements. Worst case you'll get some practice writing a pushdown automata in cut-down JavaScript, they don't teach you that in GIS school!

I'd also recommend posting an Idea to get ToJSON added to the function library, ESRI developers can bridge to the relevant runtime's JSON.stringify under the hood so I doubt it's an onerous request.

Also the usual caveat: make sure you validate any user data before you serialize, you don't want to risk webhook payload injection from malicious inputs!

Re: How to encode a JSON string in Arcade

JeffSilberberg — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:25:16 GMT

I'd also recommend posting an Idea to get ToJSON added to the function library, ESRI developers can bridge to the relevant runtime's JSON.stringify under the hood so I doubt it's an onerous request.

Where else should this request be posted?

Re: How to encode a JSON string in Arcade

DavidSolari — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:28:58 GMT

Ah right, I forget that Arcade doesn't really have its own Ideas section. I'd go with an Attribute Rules idea, that Arcade profile isn't available in Online so less-performant functions might at least get an implementation there perhaps.

Re: How to encode a JSON string in Arcade

ShareUser — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 07:02:07 GMT

If you're just looking for standard escaping, you can use Template Literals ( https://developers.arcgis.com/arcade/guide/template-literals/ )

>>> my_string = `hello\nworld\t\tthis is \r\n\t a new line`
>>> Console(my_string)
hello
world        this is 
     a new line

If you need to encode the strings with html characters like &amp, you'll have to implement the converter yourself I believe. I frequently have to replace `&` with `&amp` in our label expressions using `Replace('&', '&amp')`

You should also be able to use the ToCodePoint function if you need to encode unicode characters as escaped codepoints:

function encode(t){
  var chars = []
  var c
  for (var char in t) {
    c = t[char]
    if (ToCodePoint(c) >= 255){
      Push(chars, `\\u${ToCodePoint(c)}`)
    } else{
      Push(chars, c)
    }
  }
  return Concatenate(chars, '')
}

Console(encode('hello world 🌏'))

----------CONSOLE----------
>> hello world \u55356\u57103