Invalid character ä looking for beginning of valuestatus: original response: xxxx

[zzzhhhlll]

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Content

Why does the Dify plugin cause this issue: Invalid character ä looking for beginning of valuestatus: original response: xxxx
How to resolve this issue

[dosubot[bot]]

This error happens because Dify expects plugin responses to be valid JSON encoded in UTF-8. If the plugin returns plain text, HTML, or JSON in a different encoding, or if the output is a Python dict string (with single quotes) instead of proper JSON, the parser will fail with errors like "Invalid character ä looking for beginning of value" [source] [source] [source].

To fix this:

• Make sure your plugin always outputs valid JSON, encoded as UTF-8. If you're using Python, use json.dumps() to serialize data, not str() or just printing a dict [source].
• Check that any external APIs your plugin calls also return UTF-8 JSON.
• If you see this error only for a specific account or after a failed operation, backend data corruption could be the cause and may require maintainer intervention [source].
• For HTTP responses, recent Dify versions use better encoding detection (via charset_normalizer), so updating may help if you handle non-ASCII data [source].

If you can, capture the actual "original response" that triggered the error and check if it's valid UTF-8 JSON. This will help pinpoint whether the issue is with encoding, formatting, or unexpected content (like HTML or plain text).

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[zzzhhhlll]

Is there any issue with the approach where I retrieve JSON data from executing this flow in the Dify code, and then the plugin I developed loads the data using json.loads()?

[dosubot[bot]]

Your approach is fine as long as the JSON data you retrieve from the Dify flow is valid and UTF-8 encoded. Dify's plugin system expects all data exchanges to use proper JSON formatting and UTF-8 encoding—if the data is malformed, contains non-UTF-8 characters, or is not a true JSON string (for example, a Python dict with single quotes), json.loads() will fail with parsing errors like the one you saw "Invalid character ä".

Best practices: always serialize your output with json.dumps(), ensure all external APIs return UTF-8 JSON, and validate the structure if you expect a specific schema. Dify now validates JSON object inputs in flows using JSON schema, so if your flow enforces this, you can safely use json.loads() in your plugin "JSON schema validation".

If you still get parsing errors, inspect the raw response to confirm it's valid UTF-8 JSON—sometimes the issue is unexpected content (like HTML or plain text) or encoding mismatches.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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