AWS lambda body object can't be mapped(values can't be accessed)

Question

I am using AWS lambda with API gateway. I can access the body inside event object using dot notation. Here is the schema of body

{
  "items": {
    "1681393109842MIN:01GXX9JHKHP5ZDW92NRRNPBHA4": {
      "name": "Chicken Tandoori",
      "price": 300,
      "qty": 2
    },
    "1681399155580MIN:01GXX9JHKHP5ZDW92NRRNPBHA4": {
      "name": "Mutton Tandoori",
      "price": 400,
      "qty": 2
    }
  },
  "message": "This is a dummy message"
}

event.body provides access to the body object but after that I cannot access the values using dot operator or anything.

What have I tried:

• Using square brackets with key to access data.
• Deepcopying the object

Answer 1

In the case of Lambda Proxy Integration, you receive a JSON string in event.body, therefore you need to parse it like so:

const data = JSON.parse(event.body);
console.log(data.message); // now you can access it using dot notation.

This can be seen in the official AWS Lambda Tutorial:

if (event.body) {
    let body = JSON.parse(event.body)
    ...
    ...
}