Convert JSON dictionary to JSON lines using jQ

Question

I have a Json file named some_file.json:

{
  "dog": {
           "breed_1": 12,
           "breed_2": 20,
         },
  "cat": {
           "breed_1": 6,
           "breed_2": 8,
         },
}

I want to convert it to the below json lines file:

{"dog":{"breed_1":12,"breed_2":20}}
{"cat":{"breed_1":6,"breed_2":8}}

Notice, how every key value in the original JSON is now on a single line.

I can write some code for this in any programming language. But I was wondering how I can use jQ to convert the JSON to a JSON lines file.

I tried, cat some_file.json | jq '.[]' -c > lines_file.jsonl and it returned

{"breed_1": 12, "breed_2": 20}
{"breed_1": 6, "breed_2": 8}

The dog and cat key vanish.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 05 '21 at 21:58

Here's one possibility:

jq -c 'keys_unsorted[] as $k | {($k): .[$k]}'

Recursive unbundling

It might be worthwhile encapsulating this functionality in a recursive function:

def unbundle:
  if type == "object" 
  then keys_unsorted[] as $k
  | {($k): .[$k] | unbundle}
  else . end;

With your example, unbundle would produce:

{"dog":{"breed_1":12}}
{"dog":{"breed_2":20}}
{"cat":{"breed_1":6}}
{"cat":{"breed_2":8}}

Convert JSON dictionary to JSON lines using jQ

1 Answers1

Recursive unbundling