Bash: JSON Array to Bash Array of Strings

Question

I'm having a JSON file groups.json which is having data in below format -

[
{ "key" : "value" },
{ "key" : "value" },
{ "key" : "value" }
]

I need these key value pairs to a bash array of strings like this -

bashArray = [ { "key" : "value" }  { "key" : "value" }  { "key  : "value" } ]

How can I achieve this on Bash3.x?

Please add your desired output for declare -p bashArray to your question. — Cyrus
– Cyrus, Commented Jan 2, 2021 at 7:52

peak · Accepted Answer · 2023-01-11 20:51:16Z

2

With modern versions of bash, you'd simply use mapfile in conjunction with the -c option of jq (as illustrated in several other SO threads, e.g. Convert a JSON array to a bash array of strings)

With older versions of bash, you would still use the -c option but would build up the array one item at a time, along the lines of:

while read -r line ; do 
  ary+=("$line")
done < <(jq -c .......)

Example

#!/bin/bash
function json {
    cat<<EOF
[
  { "key" : "value1" },
  { "key" : "value2" },
  { "key" : "value3" }
]
EOF
}

while read -r line ; do 
  ary+=("$line")
done < <(json | jq -c .[])

printf "%s\n" "${ary[@]}"

Output:

{"key":"value1"}
{"key":"value2"}
{"key":"value3"}

edited Jan 11, 2023 at 20:51

answered Jan 2, 2021 at 7:56

peak

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1 Comment

peak Over a year ago

@CharlesDuffy - Tx. Fixed.

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