How to convert a json string into an individual character array in bash?

Question

I have a json string that I need to convert into an array for passing a password in. Current issue is I need to do this for many users

Current json looks like this which was generated from

[
   {
        "password": "Password1",
        "loginId": "USER1"
   }
]

I need to change it to this

[ 
   { 
      "password":[ 
         "P",
         "a",
         "s",
         "s",
         "w",
         "o",
         "r",
         "d",
         "1"
      ],
      "loginId":"USER1"
   }
]

I'd prefer to do this in bash but if anyone has other options I'm open to anything.

oguz ismail · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-22 18:13:53Z

3

In jq, splitting a string by empty string results in a character array just as you need.

jq '.[].password |= split("")' file

Online demo at jqplay.org

edited Nov 22, 2019 at 18:13

answered Nov 22, 2019 at 18:06

oguz ismail

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1 Comment

mjd Over a year ago

Wow that was super simple. Thank you so much

Reino · Accepted Answer · 2025-03-09 22:56:16Z

1

With xidel you can use either of the three queries to update the JSON:

$ xidel -s input.json \
  -e '$json(1).password   :=array{analyze-string($json()/password,".")//match}'   # Dot notation
  -e '$json(1)("password"):=array{extract($json()/password,".",0,"*")}'           # JSONiq notation
  -e '$json?1?password    :=array{x:cps(x:cps($json()/password))}'                # XPath 3.1 syntax
[
  {
    "password": [
      "P",
      "a",
      "s",
      "s",
      "w",
      "o",
      "r",
      "d",
      "1"
    ],
    "loginId": "USER1"
  }
]

The XPath-like notation ($json()/password) can't be used on the left side of the :=. You have to use the dot notation, the JSONiq notation, or the XPath 3.1 syntax.
The analyze-string() function and Xidel's own extract() and x:cps() can all be used to turn a string into a sequence of letters.

edited Mar 9 at 22:56

answered Nov 23, 2019 at 15:53

Reino

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1 Comment

oguz ismail Over a year ago

Seems like an excellent tool, wonder why I have never heard about it

Matias Barrios · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-22 18:57:25Z

Handling JSON through Bash is a bad idea. Awk is not better at all but it can be done :

awk -F':' '
function ltrim(s) { sub(/^[ \t\r\n]+/, "", s); return s }
function rtrim(s) { sub(/[ \t\r\n]+$/, "", s); return s }
function trim(s) { return rtrim(ltrim(s)); }
!/"password"/ {
    print $0
}
/"password"/ {
    found=1;
    print $1 ":["
    password = $2
    gsub(/"|,/, " ", password)
    split(trim(password),letters,"")
    for(c=1; c <= length(letters); c++ ) {
        printf("\t\t\"%s\"",letters[c])
        if (c != length(letters)) {
            printf(",\n")
        }else{
            printf("\n\t\t]\n")
        }
    }
}
' input.txt

On the other hand. I think the right tool for this is Python 3 actually :

python3 -c '
import json

result = []

list = json.loads("""
[
   {
        "password": "Password1",
        "loginId": "USER1"
   }
]
""")
for item in list:
  result.append({ "loginId" : item["loginId"], "password" : [char for char in item["password"]] })

print(json.dumps(result, indent=4))
'

Hope this helps!

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