I need to convert a protobuf message to JSON string in java. For this I am using the below API as recommended by the docs (https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/java/com/google/protobuf/util/JsonFormat.Printer.html)
String jsonString = JsonFormat.printer().includingDefaultValueFields().print(protobufMessage);
This is working fine for a simple string, however, when my string contains special characters like &, single quote etc. the gson.toJson() method inside JsonFormat is converting special characters to octal format. For example "A&BC" is converted to "A\u0026BC". Also, the resultant string has an extra backslash appended. So finally "A&BC" is converted to the string "A\\u0026BC".
If it were "A\u0026BC" then I could have converted to a byte array and formed a string with it. But because of the additional backslash I am not able to do so.
Currently I am using protobuf version 3.7.1 and I tried to upgrade and check if any latest API is available, but it did not help. I searched online but did not find any references (a similar issue was reported for JSONFormat.printToString but this API is removed in a later version. https://github.com/carlomedas/protobuf-java-format/issues/16). Can someone please help here if you have come across this issue.