convert list of word in github actions into json array and use as a strategy matrix

Question

I have in github actions a list of words with spaces in the shell Bash. e.g.

hello1 hello2 hello3

The goal is to convert this list to a JSON array format, write it to the output variable and use it as a strategy matrix via fromJSON().

• I can already successfully write the variable as GITHUB_OUTPUT.
• What is missing is to convert the upper list into a valid json array

  ['hello1','hello2','hello3']
  

  that can be used in the next job in the strategy matrix.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

You could use jq - either treating standard input as raw input

$ echo hello1 hello2 hello3 | jq --raw-input 'split(" ")'
[
  "hello1",
  "hello2",
  "hello3"
]

or passing the string as a variable

$ var='hello1 hello2 hello3'
$ jq --null-input --arg str "$var" '$str | split(" ")'
[
  "hello1",
  "hello2",
  "hello3"
]