Convert Bash 'Ls' Output to JSON Array

convert bash `ls` output to json array

Use perl as the encoder; it's guaranteed to be non-buggy, is everywhere, and with pipes, it's still reasonably clean:

ls | perl -e 'use JSON; @in=grep(s/\n$//, <>); print encode_json(\@in)."\n";'

Convert bash `ls` output to json array and print working directory to every element in the JSON array

One way:

(cd .. && find Readme -print0) | jq -sR 'split("\u0000")[1:]'

How to convert string list to JSON string array in Bash?

If your jq has inputs then the simplest would probably be to use it:

jq -ncR '[inputs]' <<< "$groups"
["group1","group2","group3"]

Otherwise, here are three alternatives:

jq -c -n --arg groups "$groups" '$groups | split("\n")' 

echo -n "$groups" | jq -cRs 'split("\n")'

echo "$groups" | jq -R -s -c 'split("\n") | map(select(length>0))'

In any case, the array can easily be incorporated into a JSON object, e.g. by extending the filter with | {groups: .}

If you really want to produce invalid JSON, consider:

printf "%s" "$groups" | jq -Rrsc 'split("\n") | "{ \(.) }"'

Output:

{ ["group_1","group_2","group_3"] }

Note on select(length>0)

Consider:

 jq -Rsc 'split("\n")' <<< $'a\nb'
 ["a","b",""]

The reason for including select(length>0) is to avoid the trailing "".

If $groups contains consecutive newlines, and if it is important to retain the empty strings, then you might want to use [:-1], e.g.

jq -cRs 'split("\n")[:-1]' <<< "$groups"
["group1","group2","group3"]

If your jq does not support [:-1], make the 0 explicit: [0:-1]

Convert arbitrary output to json by column in the terminal?

I found a great list of tools to work with command line output, and one of the tools listed is sqawk which will convert any arbitrary data to json, and let you filter it using sql like queries!

Convert ps output to JSON

ps | sqawk -output json,indent=1 'select PID,TTY,TIME,CMD from a' trim=left header=1

Output

[{
    "PID"  : "3947",
    "TTY"  : "pts/2",
    "TIME" : "00:00:07",
    "CMD"  : "zsh"
},{
    "PID"  : "15951",
    "TTY"  : "pts/2",
    "TIME" : "00:00:00",
    "CMD"
}]

converting lines to json in bash

I was also trying to convert a bunch of lines into a JSON array, and was at a standstill until I realized that -s was the only way I could handle more than one line at a time in the jq expression, even if that meant I'd have to parse the newlines manually.

jq -R -s -c 'split("\n")' < just_lines.txt

• -R to read raw input
• -s to read all input as a single string
• -c to not pretty print the output

Easy peasy.

Edit: I'm on jq ≥ 1.4, which is apparently when the split built-in was introduced.

Append new element to JSON object in specific format using bash and jq

This requires jq 1.6 in order to use the --args option.

$ jq --arg wd "$(basename "$PWD")" '.docs+={($wd): $ARGS.positional | map("\($wd)/\(.)")}' ../RandomFile.json --args *
{
  "docs": {
    "Doc": [
      "doc1"
    ],
    "Readme": [
      "Readme/Readme.md",
      "Readme/Readyou.md"
    ]
  }
}

1. The shell is used to pass the base name of the current working directory as the variable $wd.
2. The shell is also used to pass the names of all the files in the current working directory as separate arguments.
3. The file to edit is assumed to be ../RandomFile.json; if you only know that there is a JSON file in the parent, you can use ../*.json instead.
4. Use += to update the .docs object of the original with a new key (the working directory) and list of file names. map prefixes each element of $ARGS.positional with $wd.

return specific items in json object using bash

You need to do two things: one, use the -s option so that each separate object becomes an element of a single array. Two, you are trying to index the Name, instead of accessing the Name attribute of an array element.

$ jq -sr '.[].Name' tmp.json
testuser1
testuser2

If you wanted to refer to a specific element of the stream, you could:

$ jq -sr '.[1].Name' tmp.json
testuser2

With that (and assuming none of your names will contain newlines), a proper loop would look like

while IFS= read -r name; do
    ...
done < <(jq -sr '.[].Name' tmp.json)

Convert a nested JSON of objects into array into a bash array using jq

to_entries has nothing whatsoever to do with exposing JQ results to bash. Rather, it takes each entry in a JSON object and emits a {"key": key, "value": value} pair.

That can be useful, if you want to identify and extract arbitrary keys. For example:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

jq_script='
.profile.download.entries[]
| select(.store == "A")
| to_entries[]
| select(.key != "store")
| select(.key != "type")
| [.key, .value]
| @tsv
'

declare -A array=( )
while IFS=$'\t' read -r key value; do
  array[$key]=$value
done < <(jq -r "$jq_script")

# print array output
declare -p array

...will, when given your input on stdin, emit (albeit on a single line, without the whitespace changes):

declare -A array=([ENTRY_A]="testserver1_place_com"
                  [ENTRY_B]="testserver2_anotherplace_com" )

...which I assume, for lack of any better description in the question, is what you actually want.

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