Invalid key/value pair when adding json to vault - json

Question

I tried: vault kv put -format=json secrets/path #file.json
Getting this error:
Failed to parse K=V data: invalid key/value pair "#file.json": json cannot unmarshal array into Go value of type map[string] interface {}
When trying vault kv put -format=json secrets/path file.json I get:
Failed to parse K=V data: invalid key/value pair "file.json": format must be key=value
Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Answer 1

The first form is more correct if you're attempting to pass a JSON file as an argument. The second form is not referencing a file, it's just invalid syntax.
The error message on the first form suggests that the JSON file you have is formatted incorrectly. The required format will depend on your KV engine version. If you are working with a KV v2 engine, it is required to put your key:value pairs into a data top level map. If you are working with a KV v1 engine, each key:value pair needs to itself be a top level object.
KV v1:
{
"key": "value",
"foo": "bar",
"bar": "baz"
}
KV v2:
{
"data": {
"key": "value",
"foo": "bar",
"bar": "baz"
},
"options": {}
}
The -output-curl-string flag is great for inspecting what the vault CLI tool is doing under the hood, try adding it and see what transformations the binary applies to your commands.