transform json to add array objects - json

Question

I need to transform an array by adding additional objects -
I have:
"user_id":"testuser"
"auth_token":"abcd"
I need:
"key":"user_id"
"value":"testuser"
"key":"auth_token"
"value":"abcd"
I have been using jq but cant figure out how to do it. Do i need to transform this into a multi-dimensional array first?
I have tried multiple jq queries but cant find the most suitable
When i try using jq i get
jq: error: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting QQSTRING_TEXT or QQSTRING_INTERP_START or QQSTRING_END (Unix shell quoting issues?) at , line 1

Answer 1

Your input is not json, it's just a bunch of what could be thought of as key/value pairs. Assuming your json input actually looked like this:
{
"user_id": "testuser",
"auth_token": "abcd"
}
You could get an array of key/value pair objects using to_entries.
$ jq 'to_entries' input.json
[
{
"key": "user_id",
"value": "testuser"
},
{
"key": "auth_token",
"value": "abcd"
}
]
If on the other hand your input was actually that, you would need to convert it to a format that can be processed. Fortunately you could read it in as a raw string and probably parse using regular expressions or basic string manipulation.
$ jq -Rn '[inputs|capture("\"(?<key>[^\"]+)\":\"(?<value>[^\"]*)\"")]' input.txt
$ jq -Rn '[inputs|split(":")|map(fromjson)|{key:.[0],value:.[1]}]' input.txt

Answer 2

You can use to_entries filter for that.
Here is jqplay example

Answer 3

Robust conversion of key:value lines to JSON.
If the key:value specifications would be valid JSON except for the
missing punctuation (opening and closing braces etc), then a simple and quite robust approach to converting these key:value pairs to a single valid JSON object is illustrated by the following:
cat <<EOF | jq -nc -R '["{" + inputs + "}" | fromjson] | add'
"user_id": "testuser"
"auth_token" : "abcd"
EOF
Output
{
"user_id": "testuser",
"auth_token": "abcd"
}