How to replace an element in a JSON file?

Question

I need to replace the following text:

"name":["abc1234"], age:"24" 

with

"name": "abc1234", age: "24"

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you want do replace the "name" list by its first element. If this is the case try a Json processor:

jq '.name=.name[0]' ex.json

(adaptations to the unpost full example may be needed)

Answer 2

The general answer is

man 7 regex

but specifically

sed -E 's/"name":\["abc1234"\], age:"24" /"name": "abc1234", age:"24"/g' file > new

or

sed -E 's/"name" *: *\["([^"]+)"\], *age *: *"([0-9]+)"/"name": "\1", age:"\2"/g' file > new
grep -E '"name" *: *\[' new

Answer 3

Another option would be using the Python JSON module as in this SO answer. Here's a simple example:

• in.json

  { "name":["abc1234"], "age":"24" }
  

• replaceInJson.py

  #!/usr/bin/python3
  
  import json
  
  with open("in.json", "r") as f:
      data = json.load(f)
      print("Before:", data)
      data["name"] = data["name"][0]
      print("After: ", data)
  

• Output

  Before: {'name': ['abc1234'], 'age': '24'}
  After:  {'name': 'abc1234', 'age': '24'}
  

Answer 4

Assuming that the JSON document is well-formed and that the two keys name and age are top-level keys, as in

{
   "name": [ "abc1234" ],
   "age": "24"
}

... then we may use jq to replace the value of the name key with the first element of the array:

$ jq '.name |= first' file
{
  "name": "abc1234",
  "age": "24"
}

If the input is an array of similar elements, as in

[
   {
      "age": "24",
      "name": [ "abc1234" ]
   },
   {
      "age": "24",
      "name": [ "abc1234" ]
   },
   {
      "age": "24",
      "name": [ "abc1234" ]
   },
   {
      "age": "24",
      "name": [ "abc1234" ]
   }
]

Then map the operation to each element:

$ jq 'map(.name |= first)' file
[
  {
    "name": "abc1234",
    "age": "24"
  },
  {
    "name": "abc1234",
    "age": "24"
  },
  {
    "name": "abc1234",
    "age": "24"
  },
  {
    "name": "abc1234",
    "age": "24"
  }
]