From ced408299368494383934181f8129f10b8501e04 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: John Mizerek <mizerek@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2026 10:30:21 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Fix JSON parsing when Claude returns text preamble before
 menu JSON

The Claude API sometimes returns explanatory text before the JSON
response even when instructed to return only JSON. Added extraction
logic to find the first { character and strip any leading text.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 api/setup/analyzeMenuUrl.cfm | 13 +++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)

diff --git a/api/setup/analyzeMenuUrl.cfm b/api/setup/analyzeMenuUrl.cfm
index 3e3f891..c479515 100644
--- a/api/setup/analyzeMenuUrl.cfm
+++ b/api/setup/analyzeMenuUrl.cfm
@@ -1180,6 +1180,7 @@
 
     <!--- Clean up JSON response --->
     <cfset responseText = trim(responseText)>
+    <!--- Strip markdown code fences --->
     <cfif left(responseText, 7) EQ "```json">
         <cfset responseText = mid(responseText, 8, len(responseText) - 7)>
     </cfif>
@@ -1190,6 +1191,18 @@
         <cfset responseText = left(responseText, len(responseText) - 3)>
     </cfif>
     <cfset responseText = trim(responseText)>
+    <!--- If response doesn't start with {, extract JSON object from text --->
+    <cfif left(responseText, 1) NEQ "{">
+        <cfset jsonStart = find("{", responseText)>
+        <cfif jsonStart GT 0>
+            <cfset responseText = mid(responseText, jsonStart, len(responseText) - jsonStart + 1)>
+            <!--- Strip any trailing text/fences after the JSON --->
+            <cfif right(trim(responseText), 3) EQ "```">
+                <cfset responseText = left(trim(responseText), len(trim(responseText)) - 3)>
+            </cfif>
+            <cfset responseText = trim(responseText)>
+        </cfif>
+    </cfif>
     <!--- Remove trailing commas before ] or } --->
     <cfset responseText = reReplace(responseText, ",(\s*[\]\}])", "\1", "all")>
     <!--- Remove control characters that break JSON --->