Parsing Stringified JSON in AWS CloudWatch Log Streams

The Stringified JSON Problem

AWS Lambda writes objects to CloudWatch as escaped strings: {"level":"info","msg":"hello"} becomes "{\"level\":\"info\",\"msg\":\"hello\"}" inside the log line. Reading it raw is painful.

Extraction Strategy

1. Isolate the stringified segment between the outer quotes.
2. Unescape \\" → " and \\n → newlines.
3. Parse the inner JSON.

One-Click Formatting

Paste the raw CloudWatch line into the FormatHub AWS CloudWatch Log Formatter. It strips timestamps, unescapes nested quotes, and indents the stringified JSON automatically — no server round-trip, so your logs stay private.