I have a .json file which I want to read, take all the contents.. and append it to a json string that's in a bash variable
input.json
[{
"maven": {
"coordinates": "somelib",
"repo": "somerepo"
}
},
{
"maven": {
"coordinates": "anotherlib",
"exclusions": ["exclude:this", "*:and-all-that"]
}
}]
OUR_BIG_JSON variable
{
"name": "",
"myarray": [
{
"generic": {
"package": "somepymodule"
}
},
{
"rcann": {
"package": "anothermodule==3.0.0"
}
}
],
and a json I want to append to.. it's residing in a variable so we must echo it as we use jq
command attempt
echo "starting..."
inputs_json=`cat input.json`
echo "$inputs_json"
echo "$OUR_BIG_JSON"
OUR_BIG_JSON=$(echo "${OUR_BIG_JSON}" |./jq '.myarray += [{"date":"today"}]') # This worked..
next line fails
OUR_BIG_JSON=$(echo "${OUR_BIG_JSON}" |./jq '.myarray += ' $inputs_json)
out comes errors when trying to take the $inputs_json contents and just pipe it into the variable.. basically append to the JSON in memory..
jq: error: syntax error, unexpected INVALID_CHARACTER (Windows cmd shell quoting issues?) at <top-level>, line 1: .myarray += \"$inputs_json\" jq: 1 compile error
Using the --argjson option to read in the contents of your shell variable enables you to use it as variable inside the jq filter, too. Your input file can normally be read in via parameter.
jq --argjson v "${OUR_BIG_JSON}" '…your filter here using $v…' input.json
For example:
jq --argjson v "${OUR_BIG_JSON}" '$v + {myarray: ($v.myarray + .)}' input.json
Or by making the input too a variable inside the jq filter
jq --argjson v "${OUR_BIG_JSON}" '. as $in | $v | .myarray += $in' input.json
With the -n option you could also reference the input using input:
jq --argjson v "${OUR_BIG_JSON}" -n '$v | .myarray += input' input.json
And there's also the options --argfile and --slurpfile to read in the input file as variable directly...
As you have tagged bash you could also do it the other way around and use a herestring <<< to read in the bash variable as input and then using either --argfile or --slurpfile to reference the file content through a variable. For instance:
jq --argfile in input.json '.myarray += $in' <<< "${OUR_BIG_JSON}"
I am trying to format a json string using jq with expected output like this:
[
{
"command": [
"printf 'this is a text'"
]
}
]
However, I cannot get it to work for the single quotes ('), e.g. $ jq -n '[{"command": ["printf 'this is a text'"]}]' gives me a compile error.
I also thought about escaping all double quotes e.g. jq -n "[{\"command\": [\"printf 'this is a text'\"]}]", this is fine however the json string is passed in from a function, I can replace all double quotes with \" first and then run the jq command but it's not very elegant.
Is there a better way to handle the single quotes inside a json string?
Here are four alternatives that should work with a bash or bash-like shell. They can be adapted for other shells as well.
jq -n $'[{"command": ["printf \'this is a text\'"]}]'
cat << EOF | jq .
[{"command": ["printf 'this is a text'"]}]
EOF
jq --arg cmd "printf 'this is a text'" -n '[{command: [ $cmd ]}]'
VAR="[{\"command\": [\"printf 'this is a text'\"]}]"
jq -n --argjson var "$VAR" '$var'
See also How to escape single quotes within single quoted strings
I am wanting to pipe values into a bash script that will change values in a json file using jq. I've been working on this for a while now and I can't get past the first set of errors.
Here is my simple json file:
{
"0000000": {
"pogo": "AJHVUYKJBOIHKNNLNM"
},
"7000000": {
"pogo": "PPPVUYKJBOIHKNNLNM"
}
}
Here is my script
#!/bin/bash
#-- pass into script
pgid="${1}"
tpogo="${2}"
file="file.json"
#-- tmp files
tmp_dir="$(mktemp -d -t 'text.XXXXX' || mktemp -d 2>/dev/null)"
tmp_input1="${tmp_dir}/temp_input1.txt"
if [ ! -n "$2" ]; then
{ echo "Check your command as you are missing a variable ..."; echo "Example: script.sh "00000001" "jvkkjbkjbd" ..."; }
exit 1;
fi
jq -r ".${pgid}.pogo = \"${tpogo}\"" "$file" > "$tmp_input1"
cat "$tmp_input1"
rm -rf "$tmp_dir"
Here are the errors:
jq: error: Invalid numeric literal at EOF at line 1, column 9 (while parsing '.0000000.') at <top-level>, line 1:
.0000000.pogo = "XXXXXXX"
jq: error: syntax error, unexpected IDENT, expecting $end (Unix shell quoting issues?) at <top-level>, line 1:
.0000000.pogo = "XXXXXXX"
jq: 2 compile errors
I have tried so many variations from stack and most of them look similar to what I am doing now.
As for the immediate issue: .key works with { "foo": "value" }, but .100 doesn't work with { "100": "value" }; the syntax you're relying is sugar, only available for a limited subset of keys. .["100"] would work, but generating that by expanding shell variables into strings parsed as code is fragile (jq isn't a side-effecting language as of current releases, but in languages that do support I/O operations, such substitutions can be leveraged for injection attacks). To do things the Right Way, pass your variables out-of-band from your code, and use them for lookups in a manner that doesn't rely on what they contain.
The jq equivalent to awk's -v var="$value" is --arg var "$value", used thusly:
jq --arg pgid "$pgid" \
--arg tpogo "$tpogo" \
'.[$pgid].pogo = $tpogo'
Testing this with your data:
json='{"0000000":{"pogo":"AJHVUYKJBOIHKNNLNM"},"7000000":{"pogo":"PPPVUYKJBOIHKNNLNM"}}'
pgid="0000000"
tpogo="XXXXXXX"
jq --arg pgid "$pgid" --arg tpogo "$tpogo" \
'.[$pgid].pogo = $tpogo' <<<"$json"
...emits as output:
{
"0000000": {
"pogo": "XXXXXXX"
},
"7000000": {
"pogo": "PPPVUYKJBOIHKNNLNM"
}
}
I need to read these bash variables into my JSON string and I am not familiar with bash. any help is appreciated.
#!/bin/sh
BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
OBJECT_NAME=testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
TARGET_LOCATION=/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
JSON_STRING='{"bucketname":"$BUCKET_NAME"","objectname":"$OBJECT_NAME","targetlocation":"$TARGET_LOCATION"}'
echo $JSON_STRING
You are better off using a program like jq to generate the JSON, if you don't know ahead of time if the contents of the variables are properly escaped for inclusion in JSON. Otherwise, you will just end up with invalid JSON for your trouble.
BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
OBJECT_NAME=testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
TARGET_LOCATION=/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
JSON_STRING=$( jq -n \
--arg bn "$BUCKET_NAME" \
--arg on "$OBJECT_NAME" \
--arg tl "$TARGET_LOCATION" \
'{bucketname: $bn, objectname: $on, targetlocation: $tl}' )
You can use printf:
JSON_FMT='{"bucketname":"%s","objectname":"%s","targetlocation":"%s"}\n'
printf "$JSON_FMT" "$BUCKET_NAME" "$OBJECT_NAME" "$TARGET_LOCATION"
much clear and simpler
A possibility:
#!/bin/bash
BUCKET_NAME="testbucket"
OBJECT_NAME="testworkflow-2.0.1.jar"
TARGET_LOCATION="/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
# one line
JSON_STRING='{"bucketname":"'"$BUCKET_NAME"'","objectname":"'"$OBJECT_NAME"'","targetlocation":"'"$TARGET_LOCATION"'"}'
# multi-line
JSON_STRING="{
\"bucketname\":\"${BUCKET_NAME}\",
\"objectname\":\"${OBJECT_NAME}\",
\"targetlocation\":\"${TARGET_LOCATION}\"
}"
# [optional] validate the string is valid json
echo "${JSON_STRING}" | jq
In addition to chepner's answer, it's also possible to construct the object completely from args with this simple recipe:
BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
OBJECT_NAME=testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
TARGET_LOCATION=/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
JSON_STRING=$(jq -n \
--arg bucketname "$BUCKET_NAME" \
--arg objectname "$OBJECT_NAME" \
--arg targetlocation "$TARGET_LOCATION" \
'$ARGS.named')
Explanation:
--null-input | -n disabled reading input. From the man page: Don't read any input at all! Instead, the filter is run once using null as the input. This is useful when using jq as a simple calculator or to construct JSON data from scratch.
--arg name value passes values to the program as predefined variables: value is available as $name. All named arguments are also available as $ARGS.named
Because the format of $ARGS.named is already an object, jq can output it as is.
First, don't use ALL_CAPS_VARNAMES: it's too easy to accidentally overwrite a crucial shell variable (like PATH)
Mixing single and double quotes in shell strings can be a hassle. In this case, I'd use printf:
bucket_name=testbucket
object_name=testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
target_location=/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
template='{"bucketname":"%s","objectname":"%s","targetlocation":"%s"}'
json_string=$(printf "$template" "$BUCKET_NAME" "$OBJECT_NAME" "$TARGET_LOCATION")
echo "$json_string"
For homework, read this page carefully: Security implications of forgetting to quote a variable in bash/POSIX shells
A note on creating JSON with string concatenation: there are edge cases. For example, if any of your strings contain double quotes, you can broken JSON:
$ bucket_name='a "string with quotes"'
$ printf '{"bucket":"%s"}\n' "$bucket_name"
{"bucket":"a "string with quotes""}
Do do this more safely with bash, we need to escape that string's double quotes:
$ printf '{"bucket":"%s"}\n' "${bucket_name//\"/\\\"}"
{"bucket":"a \"string with quotes\""}
I had to work out all possible ways to deal json strings in a command request, Please look at the following code to see why using single quotes can fail if used incorrectly.
# Create Release and Tag commit in Github repository
# returns string with in-place substituted variables
json=$(cat <<-END
{
"tag_name": "${version}",
"target_commitish": "${branch}",
"name": "${title}",
"body": "${notes}",
"draft": ${is_draft},
"prerelease": ${is_prerelease}
}
END
)
# returns raw string without any substitutions
# single or double quoted delimiter - check HEREDOC specs
json=$(cat <<-!"END" # or 'END'
{
"tag_name": "${version}",
"target_commitish": "${branch}",
"name": "${title}",
"body": "${notes}",
"draft": ${is_draft},
"prerelease": ${is_prerelease}
}
END
)
# prints fully formatted string with substituted variables as follows:
echo "${json}"
{
"tag_name" : "My_tag",
"target_commitish":"My_branch"
....
}
Note 1: Use of single vs double quotes
# enclosing in single quotes means no variable substitution
# (treats everything as raw char literals)
echo '${json}'
${json}
echo '"${json}"'
"${json}"
# enclosing in single quotes and outer double quotes causes
# variable expansion surrounded by single quotes(treated as raw char literals).
echo "'${json}'"
'{
"tag_name" : "My_tag",
"target_commitish":"My_branch"
....
}'
Note 2: Caution with Line terminators
Note the json string is formatted with line terminators such as LF \n
or carriage return \r(if its encoded on windows it contains CRLF \r\n)
using (translate) tr utility from shell we can remove the line terminators if any
# following code serializes json and removes any line terminators
# in substituted value/object variables too
json=$(echo "$json" | tr -d '\n' | tr -d '\r' )
# string enclosed in single quotes are still raw literals
echo '${json}'
${json}
echo '"${json}"'
"${json}"
# After CRLF/LF are removed
echo "'${json}'"
'{ "tag_name" : "My_tag", "target_commitish":"My_branch" .... }'
Note 3: Formatting
while manipulating json string with variables, we can use combination of ' and " such as following, if we want to protect some raw literals using outer double quotes to have in place substirution/string interpolation:
# mixing ' and "
username=admin
password=pass
echo "$username:$password"
admin:pass
echo "$username"':'"$password"
admin:pass
echo "$username"'[${delimiter}]'"$password"
admin[${delimiter}]pass
Note 4: Using in a command
Following curl request already removes existing \n (ie serializes json)
response=$(curl -i \
--user ${username}:${api_token} \
-X POST \
-H 'Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json' \
-d "$json" \
"https://api.github.com/repos/${username}/${repository}/releases" \
--output /dev/null \
--write-out "%{http_code}" \
--silent
)
So when using it for command variables, validate if it is properly formatted before using it :)
If you need to build a JSON representation where members mapped to undefined or empty variables should be ommited, then jo can help.
#!/bin/bash
BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
OBJECT_NAME=""
JO_OPTS=()
if [[ ! "${BUCKET_NAME}x" = "x" ]] ; then
JO_OPTS+=("bucketname=${BUCKET_NAME}")
fi
if [[ ! "${OBJECT_NAME}x" = "x" ]] ; then
JO_OPTS+=("objectname=${OBJECT_NAME}")
fi
if [[ ! "${TARGET_LOCATION}x" = "x" ]] ; then
JO_OPTS+=("targetlocation=${TARGET_LOCATION}")
fi
jo "${JO_OPTS[#]}"
The output of the commands above would be just (note the absence of objectname and targetlocation members):
{"bucketname":"testbucket"}
can be done following way:
JSON_STRING='{"bucketname":"'$BUCKET_NAME'","objectname":"'$OBJECT_NAME'","targetlocation":"'$TARGET_LOCATION'"}'
For Node.js Developer, or if you have node environment installed, you can try this:
JSON_STRING=$(node -e "console.log(JSON.stringify({bucketname: $BUCKET_NAME, objectname: $OBJECT_NAME, targetlocation: $TARGET_LOCATION}))")
Advantage of this method is you can easily convert very complicated JSON Object (like object contains array, or if you need int value instead of string) to JSON String without worrying about invalid json error.
Disadvantage is it's relying on Node.js environment.
These solutions come a little late but I think they are inherently simpler that previous suggestions (avoiding the complications of quoting and escaping).
BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
OBJECT_NAME=testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
TARGET_LOCATION=/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
# Initial unsuccessful solution
JSON_STRING='{"bucketname":"$BUCKET_NAME","objectname":"$OBJECT_NAME","targetlocation":"$TARGET_LOCATION"}'
echo $JSON_STRING
# If your substitution variables have NO whitespace this is sufficient
JSON_STRING=$(tr -d [:space:] <<JSON
{"bucketname":"$BUCKET_NAME","objectname":"$OBJECT_NAME","targetlocation":"$TARGET_LOCATION"}
JSON
)
echo $JSON_STRING
# If your substitution variables are more general and maybe have whitespace this works
JSON_STRING=$(jq -c . <<JSON
{"bucketname":"$BUCKET_NAME","objectname":"$OBJECT_NAME","targetlocation":"$TARGET_LOCATION"}
JSON
)
echo $JSON_STRING
#... A change in layout could also make it more maintainable
JSON_STRING=$(jq -c . <<JSON
{
"bucketname" : "$BUCKET_NAME",
"objectname" : "$OBJECT_NAME",
"targetlocation" : "$TARGET_LOCATION"
}
JSON
)
echo $JSON_STRING
To build upon Hao's answer using NodeJS: you can split up the lines, and use the -p option which saves having to use console.log.
JSON_STRING=$(node -pe "
JSON.stringify({
bucketname: process.env.BUCKET_NAME,
objectname: process.env.OBJECT_NAME,
targetlocation: process.env.TARGET_LOCATION
});
")
An inconvenience is that you need to export the variables beforehand, i.e.
export BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
# etc.
Note: You might be thinking, why use process.env? Why not just use single quotes and have bucketname: '$BUCKET_NAME', etc so bash inserts the variables? The reason is that using process.env is safer - if you don't have control over the contents of $TARGET_LOCATION it could inject JavaScript into your node command and do malicious things (by closing the single quote, e.g. the $TARGET_LOCATION string contents could be '}); /* Here I can run commands to delete files! */; console.log({'a': 'b. On the other hand, process.env takes care of sanitising the input.
You could use envsubst:
export VAR="some_value_here"
echo '{"test":"$VAR"}' | envsubst > json.json
also it might be a "template" file:
//json.template
{"var": "$VALUE", "another_var":"$ANOTHER_VALUE"}
So after you could do:
export VALUE="some_value_here"
export ANOTHER_VALUE="something_else"
cat json.template | envsubst > misha.json
For a general case of building JSON from bash with arbitrary inputs, many of the previous responses (even the high voted ones with jq) omit cases when the variables contain " double quote, or \n newline escape string, and you need complex string concatenation of the inputs.
When using jq you need to printf %b the input first to get the \n converted to real newlines, so that once you pass through jq you get \n back and not \\n.
I found this with version with nodejs to be quite easy to reason about if you know javascript/nodejs well:
TITLE='Title'
AUTHOR='Bob'
JSON=$( TITLE="$TITLE" AUTHOR="$AUTHOR" node -p 'JSON.stringify( {"message": `Title: ${process.env.TITLE}\n\nAuthor: ${process.env.AUTHOR}`} )' )
It's a bit verbose due to process.env. but allows to properly pass the variables from shell, and then format things inside (nodejs) backticks in a safe way.
This outputs:
printf "%s\n" "$JSON"
{"message":"Title: Title\n\nAuthor: Bob"}
(Note: when having a variable with \n always use printf "%s\n" "$VAR" and not echo "$VAR", whose output is platform-dependent! See here for details)
Similar thing with jq would be
TITLE='Title'
AUTHOR='Bob'
MESSAGE="Title: ${TITLE}\n\nAuthor: ${AUTHOR}"
MESSAGE_ESCAPED_FOR_JQ=$(printf %b "${MESSAGE}")
JSON=$( jq '{"message": $jq_msg}' --arg jq_msg "$MESSAGE_ESCAPED_FOR_JQ" --null-input --compact-output --raw-output --monochrome-output )
(the last two params are not necessary when running in a subshell, but I just added them so that the output is then same when you run the jq command in a top-level shell).
Bash will not insert variables into a single-quote string. In order to get the variables bash needs a double-quote string.
You need to use double-quote string for the JSON and just escape double-quote characters inside JSON string.
Example:
#!/bin/sh
BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
OBJECT_NAME=testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
TARGET_LOCATION=/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
JSON_STRING="{\"bucketname\":\"$BUCKET_NAME\",\"objectname\":\"$OBJECT_NAME\",\"targetlocation\":\"$TARGET_LOCATION\"}"
echo $JSON_STRING
if you have node.js and get minimist installed in global:
jc() {
node -p "JSON.stringify(require('minimist')(process.argv), (k,v) => k=='_'?undefined:v)" -- "$#"
}
jc --key1 foo --number 12 --boolean \
--under_score 'abc def' --'white space' ' '
# {"key1":"foo","number":12,"boolean":true,"under_score":"abc def","white space":" "}
you can post it with curl or what:
curl --data "$(jc --type message --value 'hello world!')" \
--header 'content-type: application/json' \
http://server.ip/api/endpoint
be careful that minimist will parse dot:
jc --m.room.member #gholk:ccns.io
# {"m":{"room":{"member":"#gholk:ccns.io"}}}
Used this for AWS Macie configuration:
JSON_CONFIG=$( jq -n \
--arg bucket_name "$BUCKET_NAME" \
--arg kms_key_arn "$KMS_KEY_ARN" \
'{"s3Destination":{"bucketName":$bucket_name,"kmsKeyArn":$kms_key_arn}}'
)
aws macie2 put-classification-export-configuration --configuration "$JSON_CONFIG"
You can simply make a call like this to print the JSON.
#!/bin/sh
BUCKET_NAME=testbucket
OBJECT_NAME=testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
TARGET_LOCATION=/opt/test/testworkflow-2.0.1.jar
echo '{ "bucketName": "'"$BUCKET_NAME"'", "objectName": "'"$OBJECT_NAME"'", "targetLocation": "'"$TARGET_LOCATION"'" }'
or
JSON_STRING='{ "bucketName": "'"$BUCKET_NAME"'", "objectName": "'"$OBJECT_NAME"'", "targetLocation": "'"$TARGET_LOCATION"'" }'
echo $JOSN_STRING
I have a json file names test.json with the below content.
{
"run_list": ["recipe[cookbook-ics-op::setup_server]"],
"props": {
"install_home": "/test/inst1",
"tmp_dir": "/test/inst1/tmp",
"user": "tuser
}
}
I want to read this file into a variable in shell script & then extract the values of install_home,user & tmp_dir using expr. Can someone help, please?
props=cat test.json
works to get the json file into a variable. Now how can I extract the values using expr. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Install jq
yum -y install epel-release
yum -y install jq
Get the values in the following way
install_home=$(cat test.json | jq -r '.props.install_home')
tmp_dir=$(cat test.json | jq -r '.props.tmp_dir')
user=$(cat test.json | jq -r '.props.user')
For a pure bash solution I suggest this:
github.com/dominictarr/JSON.sh
It could be used like this:
./json.sh -l -p < example.json
print output like:
["name"] "JSON.sh"
["version"] "0.2.1"
["description"] "JSON parser written in bash"
["homepage"] "http://github.com/dominictarr/JSON.sh"
["repository","type"] "git"
["repository","url"] "https://github.com/dominictarr/JSON.sh.git"
["bin","JSON.sh"] "./JSON.sh"
["author"] "Dominic Tarr <dominic.tarr#gmail.com> (http://bit.ly/dominictarr)"
["scripts","test"] "./all-tests.sh"
From here is pretty trivial achive what you are looking for
jq is a dedicated parser for JSON files. Install jq.
values in the json can be retrieved as:
jq .<top-level-attr>.<next-level-attr> <json-file-path>
if JSON contains an array
jq .<top-level-attr>.<next-level-array>[].<elem-in-array> <json-file-path>
if you want a value in a shell variable
id = $(jq -r .<top-level-attr>.<next-level-array>[].<next-level-attr> <json-file-path>)
echo id
use -r if you need unquoted value
For simple JSON, it may be treated as a plain text file.
In that case, we can use simple text pattern matching to extract the information we need.
If you observe the following lines:
"install_home": "/test/inst1",
"tmp_dir": "/test/inst1/tmp",
"user": "user"
There exists a pattern on each line that can be described as key and value:
"key" : "value"
We can use perl with regular expressions to exact the value for any given key:
"key" hardcoded for each case "install_home", "tmp_dir" and "user"
"value" as (.*) regular expression
Then we use the $1 matching group to retrieve the value.
i=$(perl -ne 'if (/"install_home": "(.*)"/) { print $1 . "\n" }' test.json)
t=$(perl -ne 'if (/"tmp_dir": "(.*)"/) { print $1 . "\n" }' test.json)
u=$(perl -ne 'if (/"user": "(.*)"/) { print $1 . "\n" }' test.json)
cat <<EOF
install_home: $i
tmp_dir : $t
user : $u
EOF
Which outputs:
install_home: /test/inst1
tmp_dir : /test/inst1/tmp
user : tuser