jsonbashjqjsonlines

Convert sequence of JSON lines (JSONL) to JSON array

I have a file where each line is a JSON object. I'd like to convert the file to a JSON array.

The file looks something like this:

{"address":"email1@foo.bar.com", "topic":"Some topic."}
{"address":"email2@foo.bar.com", "topic":"Another topic."}
{"address":"email3@foo.bar.com", "topic":"Yet another topic."}

I'm using bash and jq.

I tried 

jq --slurp --raw-input 'split("\n")[:-1]' my_file

But that just treats each line as a string creating a JSON array of strings.

[
  "{\"address\":\"email1@foo.bar.com\", \"topic\":\"Some topic.\"}",
  "{\"address\":\"email2@foo.bar.com\", \"topic\":\"Another topic.\"}",
  "{\"address\":\"email3@foo.bar.com\", \"topic\":\"Yet another topic.\"}"
]

I'd like to have:

[
  {"address":"email1@foo.bar.com", "topic":"Some topic."},
  {"address":"email2@foo.bar.com", "topic":"Another topic."},
  {"address":"email3@foo.bar.com", "topic":"Yet another topic."}
]
Solution 
  • jq -n '[inputs]' <in.jsonl >out.json

    ...or, as suggested by @borrible:

    jq --slurp . <in.jsonl >out.json