Process AI Output to Structured JSON with Robust JSON Parser

### How it works This workflow is a robust and forgiving JSON parser designed to handle malformed or dirty JSON strings often returned by AI models or scraped from web pages. It takes a text string as input and attempts to extract and parse a valid JSON object from it. 1. **Cleans Input:** It starts by trimming whitespace and removing common Markdown code fences (like ```json) that might wrap the JSON. 2. **Applies Multiple Fixes:** It systematically attempts to correct common JSON errors in a specific order: - Escapes unescaped control characters (like newlines) within strings. - Fixes invalid backslash escape sequences. - Removes trailing commas. - Intelligently attempts to fix unescaped double quotes inside string values. 3. **Parses Strategically:** If a direct parse fails, it tries to extract a potential JSON object from the text (e.g., finding a `{...}` block inside a larger sentence) and then re-applies the cleaning logic to that extracted portion. 4. **Outputs Clean Data:** If successful, it outputs the parsed JSON fields. By default, it removes the detailed `parsing_status` object, but you can deactivate the final Set node to keep it for debugging. ### Set up steps **Setup time: ~1 minute** This workflow is designed to be used as a sub-workflow and requires no internal setup. 1. In your main workflow, add an **Execute Sub-Workflow** node where you need to parse a messy JSON string. 2. In the **Workflow** parameter, select this Robust JSON Parser workflow. 3. Ensure the data you send to the node is a JSON object containing a `text` field, where the value of `text` is the string you want to parse. For example: `{ "text": {"\\key\\": "\\some broken json...\\} }`. 4. The workflow will return the successfully parsed data. To see a detailed log of the cleaning process, simply deactivate the final `Remove parsing_status` node inside this workflow.

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Process AI Output to Structured JSON with Robust JSON Parser
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Last updated August 29, 2026
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How to import this workflow into n8n

  1. 1Purchase or download the workflow to get the n8n workflow JSON file.
  2. 2In your n8n instance, open Workflows and choose "Import from File" (or paste the JSON with Ctrl+V on the canvas).
  3. 3Open each node marked with a credential warning and connect your own accounts and API keys.
  4. 4Run the workflow once manually to verify the data flow, then toggle it to Active.

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