How to replace a value in json file using jq and returning the whole content

Question

I have a json like this

{
  "AgentGroupId": null,
  "AgentId": null,
  "CreateType": "Website",
  "IsPrimary": true,
  "IsShared": true,
  "HeaderAuthentication": {
    "Headers": [
      {
        "Name": "api-key",
        "Value": "TEST_API_KEY_VALUE-2",
        "OriginalName": null,
        "IsReplacedCredentials": false
      },
      {
        "Name": "Authorization",
        "Value": "",
        "OriginalName": null,
        "IsReplacedCredentials": false
      }
    ],
    "IsEnabled": true
  },
  "IsTimeWindowEnabled": false,
  "AdditionalWebsites": [],
  "BasicAuthenticationApiModel": {
    "Credentials": null,
    "IsEnabled": false,
    "NoChallenge": false
  },
  "ClientCertificateAuthenticationSetting": null,
  "Cookies": null,
  "CrawlAndAttack": true,
  "EnableHeuristicChecksInCustomUrlRewrite": true,
  "ExcludedLinks": [
    {
      "RegexPattern": "gtm\\.js"
    },
    {
      "RegexPattern": "WebResource\\.axd"
    },
    {
      "RegexPattern": "ScriptResource\\.axd"
    }
  ],
  "ExcludedUsageTrackers": [],
  "DisallowedHttpMethods": [],
  "ExcludeLinks": true,
  "ExcludeAuthenticationPages": false,
  "FindAndFollowNewLinks": true,
  "FormAuthenticationSettingModel": {
    "Integrations": {},
    "CustomScripts": [],
    "InteractiveLoginRequired": false,
    "DefaultPersonaValidation": null,
    "DetectBearerToken": true,
    "DisableLogoutDetection": false,
    "IsEnabled": false,
    "LoginFormUrl": null,
    "LoginRequiredUrl": null,
    "LogoutKeywordPatterns": null,
    "LogoutKeywordPatternsValue": null,
    "LogoutRedirectPattern": null,
    "OverrideTargetUrl": false,
    "Personas": [],
    "PersonasValidation": null
  }
}

My goal is to replace the value of api-key under HeaderAuthentication (it could be index 0 or 1 or 2 or any)

I did this

jq '.HeaderAuthentication.Headers[] | select(.Name == "api-key") | .Value = "xxx"' scanprofile.json > tmp && mv tmp scanprofile.json

The issue is seems jq is returning only the part that replaced, but I need the whole file, what I am doing wrong?

this is the content of file after running the command

{
  "Name": "api-key",
  "Value": "xxx",
  "OriginalName": null,
  "IsReplacedCredentials": false
}

ps. I saw some stackoverflow post using sponge, I can't use sponge in our environment

Answer 1

The jq expression

.HeaderAuthentication.Headers[] | select(.Name == "api-key")

picks out the Headers array element that has api-key as its Name value.

The expression

(.HeaderAuthentication.Headers[] | select(.Name == "api-key")).Value |= "NEW VALUE"

updates the value of the Value key in that array element to the literal string NEW VALUE.

Using a shell variable that holds the new value, from the command line:

new_api_key='My new key'
jq --arg newkey "$new_api_key" '(.HeaderAuthentication.Headers[] | select(.Name == "api-key")).Value |= $newkey' file.json

If the key needs to be base64 encoded, update with the value ($newkey|@base64) in place of just $newkey in the jq expression.

To make the change in-place, use something like

tmpfile=$(mktemp)
cp file.json "$tmpfile" &&
jq --arg ...as above... "$tmpfile" >file.json &&
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"

or, if you don't need to keep the original file's permissions and ownership etc.,

tmpfile=$(mktemp)
jq --arg ...as above... file.json >"$tmpfile" &&
mv -- "$tmpfile" file.json

Answer 2

The following should work:

tmp=$(mktemp /tmp/tmp.XXXXXXX)
jq  '(.HeaderAuthentication.Headers[] | select(.Name == "api-key") | .Value) = "xxx"' scanprofile.json  > "$tmp" && mv "$tmp"  scanprofile.json

Another way to do it is to e.g use this:

cat <<< $(jq '(.HeaderAuthentication.Headers[] | select(.Name == "api-key") | .Value) = "xxx"' scanprofile.json ) > scanprofile.json

Here we are using cat to send modified output directly to the file.

You need to group them in parens.