JSON formatting, either from file or variable

Question

I have a PS script, which get JSON in variable ant then saves it in file.

Unfortunately, it get value in one string, like this:

{   "persistentdataapi": "https://somevalue.azurewebsites.net/",   "collectioncountapi": "https://anothervalue.azurewebsites.net/",   "eventserviceapi": "https://thirdvalue.azurewebsites.net/",   "securityserviceapi": "https://fourthvalue.azurewebsites.net/" }

Is there any way, to process this value through some (preferably PS) JSON formatting, to get this one:

{
"persistentdataapi": "https://somevalue.azurewebsites.net/",
"collectioncountapi": "https://anothervalue.azurewebsites.net/",
"eventserviceapi": "https://thirdvalue.azurewebsites.net/",
"securityserviceapi": "https://fourthvalue.azurewebsites.net/",
}

Code to get value in Jenkins:

Import-Module "C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\Octopus-Cmdlets\0.4.4\Octopus-Cmdlets.psd1"

connect-octoserver http://internal-Octopus.azure.com:8082 API-123456789012345678
$raw = (Get-OctoVariable var.Portal.Web DataAPIJson | Where-Object { $_.Environment -eq "QA" } )

$raw.Value | Out-File "$env:WORKSPACE\portal\var.Portal.Web\dataapi.json"

Meany

Answer 1

Powershell by default pretty-prints any JSON it produces.

So the correct way to do pretty-printing is to parse the JSON string into an object, and immediately convert it back to a JSON string.

$json = '{   "persistentdataapi": "https://somevalue.azurewebsites.net/",   "collectioncountapi": "https://anothervalue.azurewebsites.net/",   "eventserviceapi": "https://thirdvalue.azurewebsites.net/",   "securityserviceapi": "https://fourthvalue.azurewebsites.net/" }'

$json | ConvertFrom-Json | ConvertTo-Json

produces

{
    "persistentdataapi":  "https://somevalue.azurewebsites.net/",
    "collectioncountapi":  "https://anothervalue.azurewebsites.net/",
    "eventserviceapi":  "https://thirdvalue.azurewebsites.net/",
    "securityserviceapi":  "https://fourthvalue.azurewebsites.net/"
}

or in your case

$file = "$env:WORKSPACE\portal\var.Portal.Web\dataapi.json"
$raw.Value | ConvertFrom-Json | ConvertTo-Json | Out-File $file -Encoding UTF8

As a side-effect this also makes sure that the JSON in the file is valid, because otherwise ConvertFrom-Json will throw an error.

Please always explicitly specify UTF8 encoding when reading and writing JSON files.

$data = Get-Content $file -Encoding UTF8 | ConvertFrom-Json

$data | ConvertTo-Json | Set-Content $file -Encoding UTF8

The reason for that is

• By widely-accepted convention, JSON files ought to be UTF8.
• Unless specified otherwise, Get-Content and Set-Content will use the system's default encoding to read/write text files.
• The system default is very seldom UTF-8, most of the time it will be a legacy single-byte encoding like Windows-1252.
• This creates the risk of
  • mangling Unicode characters, which are legal in JSON, when reading a JSON file.
  • creating JSON files that are not UTF-8, making them hard to consume by others.

In fact, always specify an encoding explicitly when working with text files, not only in the case of JSON.

Jugulate

Answer 2

PrettyifyJson.ps1

function PrettyifyJson ($FromFile, $ToFile) {
    Get-Content $FromFile |
      ConvertFrom-Json | 
      ConvertTo-Json -Depth 100 >> $ToFile
}

PrettyifyJson -FromFile foo-raw.json -ToFile foo-pretty.json

** sample-usage.ps1**

Get-ChildItem d*-raw.json | ForEach-Object {
    PrettyifyJson -FromFile $_ -ToFile ("$_".Replace('-raw.json', '.json'))
  }

Magdala