Bash Array from JSON Array [duplicate] - json

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convert JSON array to bash array preserving whitespaces
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Bash: JSON Array to Bash Array of Strings
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I am working on a bash script which needs to ingest some data from a json (formatted with jq) and do some simple work with it, however in the process of doing so I noticed elements are getting broken down and even though I am ingesting elements containing a whitespace enclosed in double-quotes, elements are processed incorrectly.
Here's an exemplary json I will be processing
{
"start": 1689652086,
"finish": 1679652100,
"contestants": [
{
"name": "Joan-Juan Frank",
"comment": "I reek of havoc."
},
{
"name": "Kimi-Kinder Karten",
"output": "I love chocolate."
},
{
"name": "Peter-Parker Plays Piano",
"output": "And I am tired of it"
}
]
}
I composed this command in bash to get this formatted string out of the json - I am basically selecting each value from name property of each element in the json array
cat json | jq '.contestants[].name' | tr '\n' ' '
this results in this basic format which should have worked as an array declaration
"Joan-Juan Frank" "Kimi-Kinder Karten" "Peter-Parker Plays Piano"
I tried each of these two version of creating an array (none of them worked)
contestants=$(cat json | jq '.contestants[].name' | tr '\n' ' ')
array=($contestants)
or
array=($(cat json | jq '.contestants[].name' | tr '\n' ' '))
Lastly, I used this for loop to output each element
for i in "${array[#]}"; do
echo "Working on: $i"
done
output of the script is
Working on: "Joan-Juan
Working on: Frank"
Working on: "Kimi-Kinder
Working on: Karten"
Working on: "Peter-Parker
Working on: Plays
Working on: Piano"
I also went back and found out that the issue seems to be somewhere at the level of the array declaration. When I echoed the variable before declaring an array and then echoed elements of the array, here's what I got:
echo of $contestants - "Joan-Juan Frank" "Kimi-Kinder Karten" "Peter-Parker Plays Piano"
echo of $array
echo "${array[0]}"
"Joan-Juan
echo "${array[1]}"
Frank"
echo "${array[2]}"
"Kimi-Kinder
echo "${array[3]}"
Karten"
...
I have then tried to declare the array without any variable
array=("Joan-Juan Frank" "Kimi-Kinder Karten" "Peter-Parker Plays Piano" )
and this was processed correctly, as I would expect
Working on: Joan-Juan Frank
Working on: Kimi-Kinder Karten
Working on: Peter-Parker Plays Piano
I was trying suggestions from other threads like this one, this one or this one, but in my case, I wasn't able to make this work when I am ingesting content from a variable, instead of just declaring a static array. Although, it is possible I might have made a mistake along the way.
Do you have any idea how I could fix this?

Answer 1

You could declare the Bash array using the -a option, and have jq escape its output using the #sh builtin:
unset array
declare -a array="($(jq -r '.contestants[].name | #sh' json))"
This should have the same effect as
unset array
array=("Joan-Juan Frank" "Kimi-Kinder Karten" "Peter-Parker Plays Piano")