Populating variables from another file reading user input in bash/shell script - json

Question

I am giving the user the possibility to answers some questions so that I can perform the according cURL requests and create what is needed accordingly.
In this way:
~functions.sh
echo "Question number 1?"
read question1
echo "Question number 2?"
read question2
The script is organised in a couple of files:
functions.sh, where I store all the functions
flow.sh, where the questions are asked and the previous functions are called in order
credentials.sh, where I store the api key credentials, api url etc.
env.sh, where I am hoping to store the env configuration that needs to be dynamically generated...
Unfortunately I am pretty much new to that as I come from a Frontend Background so I Am not aware or can't figure out/find on here, how to achieve the following:
I would need to send a cURL request based on one of the users answers, and that's easily done just by calling ie {$question1} inside one of the functions of functions.sh that is later called in the main flow.sh after putting the file as a source...
Unfortunately, when it comes to populating a multiline environment configuration in a separate file to be later be sent as a json in the cURL it gets out of my comfort zone...
Id need so send something along the lines of
curl -X POST "https//api.url"
-H "headers"
--data '{"content":"'{$env}'"}'
Where $env is the env.sh file, json valid, and populated with the variables read before from user input accordingly...
To solve the multi line json problem maybe I could use the following:
$( awk '{printf "%s\\n", $0}' ./env.sh )
Still I am clueless on how to populate such file form user read and echo it inside that json part in the cURL...

Answer 1

You could use awk to directly save correct JSON data to env.sh (partly taken from Dr.K's answer to this other question):
echo "Question number 1?"
read question1
echo "Question number 2?"
read question2
echo "Question number 3?"
read question3
awk ' BEGIN { print "[" ; } \
{ print " {" \
print " \"Question1\" : \"" $question1 "\"," \
print " \"Question2\" : \"" $question2 "\"," \
print " \"Question3\" : \"" $question3 "\"" \
print " }" \
} \
END { print "]" } ' env.sh
And then this should work correctly as JSON:
curl -X POST "https//api.url"
-H "headers"
--data '{"content":"{$env}"}'
and the data payload should be like this:
{
content: [
{
"Question1" : "User answer 1",
"Question2" : "User answer 2",
"Question3" : "User answer 3"
}
]
}
Is this what you had in mind?

Answer 2

For anyone who ends up here what I did was:
Creating a separate file where I set a variable and I cat the EOF inside of that.
env=$( cat <<EOF
multi
line
content
goes
here
EOF
)
export env
Then I generate a valid json through jq
generate_json() {
newenv="$( jq -nc --arg str "$env" '{"content": $str}' )"
}
and finally I use $newenv in the curl straight away:
example_curl() {
curl -X PUT "https://apiendpoint.co.uk" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer 123123" \
--data "${newenv}"
}