Parse through JSON using only Bash

Question

I have a JSON file :

{
    "request_id": "9a081c0c-9401-7eca-f55d-50e3b7c0301c",
    "lease_id": "",
    "renewable": false,
    "lease_duration": 2764800,
    "data": {
        "password": "test123",
        "username": "testuser1"
    },
    "wrap_info": null,
    "warnings": null,
    "auth": null
}

I am trying to read the values of username and password. Now I was able to integrate bash and python to get what I wanted.

# curl --silent -k https://1.2.3.4:8200/v1/secret/service/clustered -H "X-Vault-Token: c2e3b6ec17df" | python3 -c "import sys, json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['data']['password'])"
test123

# curl --silent -k https://1.2.3.4:8200/v1/secret/service/clustered -H "X-Vault-Token: c2e3b6ec17df" | python3 -c "import sys, json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['data']['username'])"
testuser1

But since I only want to use bash, I have done the following too:

# curl --silent -k https://1.2.3.4:8200/v1/secret/service/clustered -H "X-Vault-Token: c2e3b6ec17df" | sed -n -e 's/^.*password":"//p' | cut -d'"' -f1
test123

# curl --silent -k https://1.2.3.4:8200/v1/secret/service/clustered -H "X-Vault-Token: c2e3b6ec17df" | sed -n -e 's/^.*username":"//p' | cut -d'"' -f1
testuser

I am just concerned whether I have made use of sed and cut commands correctly in this case. Or is there a better way to extract the required fields?

Answer 1

I would recommend using jq:

$ jq '.data.password' data.json
"test123"

Or both fields:

$ jq '.data.password, .data.username' data.json
"test123"
"testuser1"