Marshal []byte to JSON, giving a strange string [duplicate]

Answer 1

As per the docs: https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/#Marshal

Array and slice values encode as JSON arrays, except that []byte encodes as a base64-encoded string, and a nil slice encodes as the null JSON object.

The value AAAAAQID is a base64 representation of your byte slice - e.g.

b, err := base64.StdEncoding.DecodeString("AAAAAQID")
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

fmt.Printf("%v", b)
// Outputs: [0 0 0 1 2 3]