convert JSON array to space separated string

Question

I have a JSON file like this:

{
 "name" : "Allow",
 "source" : [ "*" ,"0.0.0.0"]
}

I need to parse this JSON so the array of strings inside JSON can convert to "space separated string". I later need to supply these variables to another function like this:

local file="file-name"
while read val; do
    local name
    local source

    name=$(jq --raw-output '.name' <<< ${val})
    source=$(jq --raw-output '.source' <<< ${val})
__test "${name}" "${source}" 
  done < <(cat ${file} | jq -rc '.[]')

So,I basically need to change source to a string and pass it, rather than a list of strings.

Answer 1

In general, the elements of an array may be converted to a single space-delimited string using join(" ") in jq. In your case, the .source array may be converted into a space-delimited string using .source | join(" ").

I'm assuming that your input document contains an array of objects of the type that you show in the question.

Instead of calling jq multiple times in each iteration, consider using jq to get the data into a form that is usable as a single stream:

jq -r '.[] | [ .name, (.source | join(" ")) ] | @tsv' file.json |
while IFS=$'\t' read -r name source; do
    __test "$name" "$source"
done

This provides two tab-delimited fields to the loop. The first field is simply the .name value from the JSON document, while the second field is a space-delimited string made by concatenating the elements from the .source array. The concatenation of array elements into a singe string is done with join() in jq, and the tab-delimited output is produced by providing @tsv with an array.

---

If you feel brave, you could even use

eval "$( jq -r '.[] | [ "__test", .name, (.source | join(" ")) ] | @sh' file.json )"

This uses jq to actually create the shell commands that you aim to execute. The calling shell then gets this script as a string and runs it with eval. In the jq expression, @sh is used to provide proper quoting for the command name and its arguments. The jq expression here expects an array of objects of the type shown in the question.