Example of how to clean out encoded characters from JSON values in scala

build.sbt

libraryDependencies += "com.typesafe.play" %% "play-json" % "2.5.9"

libraryDependencies += "org.apache.commons" % "commons-lang3" % "3.4"

scalaVersion := "2.11.7"

cleanJsonValues.scala

import play.api.libs.json._
import play.api.data.validation.ValidationError
import scala.io.Source
import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils
import java.nio.file.{Paths, Files}
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets

object example {

	def cleanJsValue(jsValue: JsValue): JsValue = {
		jsValue match {
			case JsObject(fields) => 
				val updatedFields = fields.map { case (k,v) =>
					k -> cleanJsValue(v)
				}
				JsObject(updatedFields)
			case JsArray(list) => JsArray(list.map(cleanJsValue))
			case JsString(s) => JsString(StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(s))
			case j => j
		}	
	}
	
	def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
		args.map { fileName => 
			val s = Source.fromFile(fileName).map(_.toByte).toArray
			val myJson = Json.parse(s)
			val cleanedJson = cleanJsValue(myJson)

			Files.write(Paths.get(fileName + ".cleaned.json"), Json.prettyPrint(cleanedJson).getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8))
		}
	}
	
}