Parsing JSON in Bash with jq

Quick answer: Bash has no native JSON parser — don't use grep/sed/awk on JSON, it breaks on nesting and escaping. Use jq: pipe curl output into it to extract fields, populate variables, and loop over arrays. The golden rule is to let jq do the parsing and feed clean values into the shell. For the full jq filter language, see Querying JSON with jq.

The everyday pattern is one pipe:

curl -s https://api.example.com/user | jq '.name'
# "Ada"

# -r strips the quotes so it's a plain shell string
curl -s https://api.example.com/user | jq -r '.name'
# Ada

-s silences curl's progress meter; jq -r (raw output) removes the surrounding quotes so the value is usable as a normal string. Without -r, .name stays "Ada" with quotes, which is rarely what you want in a script.

Capture a single value:

name=$(curl -s "$URL" | jq -r '.user.name')
echo "Hello, $name"

Read several fields at once without parsing repeatedly — emit them on lines and read them:

read -r id name <<< "$(jq -r '.id, .name | @text' user.json | paste -sd' ')"

Or, cleaner for multiple values, output a tab-separated row and split:

jq -r '[.id, .name, .email] | @tsv' user.json | while IFS=$'\t' read -r id name email; do
  echo "$id -> $name <$email>"
done

@tsv (and @csv) safely encode values, handling embedded tabs, quotes, and newlines that would otherwise corrupt your loop.

The safe way to iterate is to have jq emit compact, one-per-line objects and read each line:

curl -s "$URL" | jq -c '.users[]' | while read -r user; do
  name=$(jq -r '.name' <<< "$user")
  echo "User: $name"
done

jq -c prints each element on a single line (compact), so one read gets one whole record. This is essentially treating the stream as JSONL.

• Don't parse JSON with grep/sed. It appears to work until a value contains a brace, a quote, or a newline — then it silently returns garbage. Use jq.
• Quote your variables ("$user", "$name") so values with spaces don't word-split.
• Check that the response is JSON. If curl returned an HTML error page, jq prints a parse error — guard with the HTTP status (curl -fsS fails on HTTP errors). See Unexpected Token in JSON.
• Use // empty or // defaults for missing keys: jq -r '.nickname // "n/a"'.

To prototype a jq filter against a sample document before scripting it, paste the JSON into the JSON Tree View to find the right paths.

How do I parse JSON in a bash script? Use jq. Pipe your JSON (often from curl -s) into a jq filter, and use jq -r to get raw, unquoted values suitable for shell variables. Bash has no built-in JSON parser.

Why shouldn't I use grep or sed on JSON? JSON nesting, quoting, and escaping make line-based tools unreliable — they break the moment a value contains a brace, quote, or newline. jq parses the structure correctly.

How do I loop over a JSON array in bash? Emit one compact element per line with jq -c '.array[]' and read each line in a while loop. Parse fields from each element with another jq -r call.

How do I get a value without the surrounding quotes? Use jq -r (raw output), e.g. jq -r '.name'. Without -r, jq prints JSON-encoded strings that keep their double quotes.