How can you deserialize an escaped JSON string with NSJSONSerialization?

If you have nested JSON, then just call JSONObjectWithData twice:

NSString *string =  @"\"{ \\\"name\\\" : \\\"Bob\\\", \\\"age\\\" : 21 }\"";// --> the string// "{ \"name\" : \"Bob\", \"age\" : 21 }"NSError *error;NSString *outerJson = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:[string dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]                              options:NSJSONReadingAllowFragments error:&error];// --> the string//  { "name" : "Bob", "age" : 21 }NSDictionary *innerJson = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:[outerJson dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]                              options:0 error:&error];// --> the dictionary// { age = 21; name = Bob; }

Convert the string to data:

NSString *string = @"{ \"name\" : \"Bob\", \"age\" : 21 }";NSData *data = [string dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];NSError *error;id json = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data options:0 error:&error];

Just cut off the leading and trailing quotes and then replace all \"s with ":

NSString *sub = [original substringWithRange:(NSRange){ 1, original.length - 2 }];NSString *unescaped = [sub stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\\\" withString:@"\"];