👀 Views: 11 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-07

bash jq ubuntu json

I'm reviewing some code and I'm prototyping a solution and I've been banging my head against this for hours... I'm trying to parse a complex nested JSON object in my Bash script using `jq`, but I keep getting an 'Invalid JSON' behavior. The JSON structure I receive from an API looks like this: ```json { "data": { "items": [ { "id": 1, "attributes": { "name": "Item 1", "details": { "description": "A detailed description of Item 1." } } }, { "id": 2, "attributes": { "name": "Item 2", "details": { "description": "A detailed description of Item 2." } } } ] } } ``` In my script, I'm trying to extract the names of all items like this: ```bash response=$(curl -s 'https://api.example.com/data') item_names=$(echo "$response" | jq -r '.data.items[].attributes.name') echo "$item_names" ``` However, when I run the script, I encounter the following behavior: ``` Invalid JSON ``` I verified that the API response is valid JSON by printing it directly, and it displays correctly. I also tried running the `jq` command directly in the terminal with the same response, and it works fine. This leads me to believe that the scenario might be with how the `response` variable is being captured or passed to `jq`. I've tried wrapping the `response` variable in double quotes and single quotes, but the behavior continues. I'm using Ubuntu 22.04 and the `jq` version is 1.6. Any ideas on what could be causing this scenario? I recently upgraded to Bash 3.9. Thanks for any help you can provide! I'm using Bash latest in this project. Thanks for any help you can provide!