JSON Scalar doesn't work on String types directly?

[ssona09]

Hi there, in my Netflix DGS schema I have defined objects with fields of the type JSON Scalar since they are String types in the database/entity being returned in the data fetcher, but I want to display them as JSON in my response.

My issue is that in order for a particular field to display as JSON, I cant simply use the JSON scalar on a String field that exists in my entity. Instead I needed to create a separate DTO to the entity containing the field, and make the corresponding field of the type Map. This means that in my data fetcher, I use Jackson Object Mapper to convert my String to a Map, and set the DTO field to this map, returning the DTO in my data fetcher.

How can i convert the string to JSON without having to make a separate DTO with a Map type for the field that needs to be displayed as JSON? I thought the JSON scalar would automatically work on String types

Note - I created and defined the JSON scalar manually via DgsRuntimeWiring as mentioned in the docs https://netflix.github.io/dgs/scalars/