api: escape error strings in batch result JSON (bulk-submit loses all results)

[emilstahl]

Bug

bulk-submit on a large URL list fails with:

Error: json: error calling MarshalJSON for type json.RawMessage: invalid character 'h' after object key:value pair

No output at all — the results of every URL in the batch are lost, even though all scans were submitted.

Root cause

api/batch.go BatchResultToRaw() interpolated err.Error() directly into JSON:

errRaw := json.RawMessage(fmt.Sprintf(`{"error": "%s"}`, err.Error()))

Go HTTP client errors embed quotes — *url.Error renders as Get "http://host/": .... When a scan fails with one of these (transient network error, client timeout, connection reset), the raw message becomes:

{"error": "Get "http://host/": context deadline exceeded"}

which is invalid JSON (h of http appears right after the "error": "Get " key:value pair — matching the error message above). The invalid json.RawMessage then makes the final json.MarshalIndent of the whole result array in cmd/scan/bulk.go fail, so the entire batch prints nothing. Small batches usually dodge it because they rarely hit a client-side network error; ~100+ URLs almost always trigger one.

Fix

Marshal the error message with json.Marshal instead of interpolating it. Added a regression test with a *url.Error-style message.

Reproduced with binary urlscan-cli 2026.08.18 on a 108-URL bulk submit; subsets of the same list passed, full list failed deterministically; fixed build returns all 108 results.

[ninoseki]

Thanks and sorry for the late response.