bash - Iterating through JSON array in Shell script

Question

I have a JSON data as follows in data.json file

[
  {"original_name":"pdf_convert","changed_name":"pdf_convert_1"},
  {"original_name":"video_encode","changed_name":"video_encode_1"},
  {"original_name":"video_transcode","changed_name":"video_transcode_1"}
]

I want to iterate through the array and extract the value for each element in a loop. I saw jq. I find it difficult to use it to iterate. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Just use a filter that would return each item in the array. Then loop over the results, just make sure you use the compact output option (-c) so each result is put on a single line and is treated as one item in the loop.

jq -c '.[]' input.json | while read i; do
    # do stuff with $i
done