Safe parse a stringified object

[christoph-fricke]

I recently discovered zod and absolutely love the library. Great work! 👍

A few days ago I found a perfect use case where I have to safe parse a string to an object and make sure that it conforms with a required schema. Naturally my first thought was to use zod for this.

const schema = z.object({
  logoUrl: z.string().url("Logo has to be a valid URL."),
  appbarBg: z.string().refine(isHexColor),
  elementStatus: z.object({
    status100: z.string().refine(isHexColor),
    status200: z.string().refine(isHexColor),
  }),

Turns out that calling schema.safeParse("Valid object as string") (String is simplified) fails because a string is not an object.
Calling schema.safeParse(JSON.parse("Valid object as string")) would work but destroys the idea of safeParse since JSON.parse throws an error for invalid JSON strings.

Is there an option in zod to parse a stringified object? I could find something in the docs. I currently use the version 1.11.13

[colinhacks]

This doesn't exist natively in Zod currently. I recommend parsing the JSON externally to Zod (with your own try/catch logic) then pass the properly parsed JSON into your schema.

The behavior of safeParse is somewhat subtle in that it doesn't catch all errors; for instance, if an error is thrown inside a refinement or transform function, it is thrown normally. safeParse is just an easier way to handle ZodErrors, which contain a list of all the validation issues that are detected during parsing.