Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello.
I'm new to bash script and I'm learning the basics by writing some scripts.
Recently a friend of mine asked me if I could try to write a script to him to automate a couple of processes that uses JSON RPCs.

I'll try to explain in few words the workflow just to contextualize the problem.
There is an app which runs as a deamon. This app is the one which parses the commands and sends them to the remote server. It also receives the response and then sends it to another more userfriendly app which is the app the user interacts with.

Something like this:
One of these commands takes up to 8 parameters and 2 of these 8 parameters are lists of items.
The format is as follows:

Code:

app-name option1 "param1" "{\"item1\":num1,\"item2\":num2, \"item_n\":num_n}" num3 "param2" "[\"item3\",\"item4\",\"item_n\"]" param4 num5 "param5"

The goal here is to make the items inside those two lists, dynamic, I mean, I load those items from a file, line by line, then num1, num2 and num_n are evaluated in the code and used there. Other params are kind of static.

I already have a version that builds this command correctly with all brackets and double quotes and all special chars in place but the problem is that in the way I did it, JSON parser sees the whole command as a single long string and cannot be that way.
What I did in the code I have, was simply append the static parts of the command before and after of dynamically add the list items with for loops. But as I said, I did it in a way that it's just a huge single string.

JSON RPC expects each parameter as separate strings.

The other factor adding some complexity is what I mentioned of adding items to the lists dynamically. As those items are loaded from a file, it all depends on how many items there are in the file!

Does anyone knows a way of doing this with bash script?

Yes, you can do this in bash, but most people working with JSON are serializing data to be displayed on the web and so, they generally do not program web-based applications using bash.

What I find at unix.com is a lot of people, especially during the start of the school year in September, tend to have these "odd problems" where they are required to use one scripting language or another to do a homework assignment and then they attempt to hide the fact it is homework by coming up with some odd reason to do something that, in the real world, is simply not done this way.

For example, I write a lot of code to process JSON and I do this either in Javascript or in PHP; because 99% of all the code I write is related to web projects; because most people (like me) use JSON APIs to retrieve JSON objects across the network and use those objects in an application, generally written for the web (PHP, Javascript, Python) or maybe a modern gaming engine (which will use C++, Javascript, or C#, for example).

When you ask, "is this possible" my thoughts are why do you ask this? Because just about everything in a computing environment is possible.

The trick is to use the right tools for the job based on the application, the skill sets of the "shop" you are working in, etc.

However, during this time of year, more often than not, the driving requirement we see from new members is the strict and narrow task in a homework problem.

Now, I'm not staying for sure you are posting a vailed homework assignment, but I can tell you that this time of year, every year, we see a lot of homework posts, often written like yours, in a kind of obscure post about "a friend wants me to do this or that" or "I must do this in bash, because only bash is permitted" ; and it turns out that 95% of the time, these are all some forms of classwork where the member is new and posts something in some "disguised post" to get answers to homework assignments.

So, having said that....

What are you actually doing? For what actual project?

Please provide the project details of what you are really doing.

Thanks.

Thank you for replying...

Well, in fact it looks alot like that. However I can assure it's not an homework. I have already graduated earlier this year in February. And I'm not someone that just finished school in the 20's. I'm a full time worker, parents a enthusiast in electronics and programming.

This was supposed to be a simple script to process payments in bitcoins but this last command is messing with my nerves. I'm trying to start a simple project if a friend of mine and I told him I could do this script to automate some tasks.

I would appreciate any help. I'll come around here later.

Thanks
Psy

For simple JSON tasks jq is a versatile tool for querying, manipulating and creating JSON within a Shell script. You'll find a lot of usage examples in the web and of course in the excellent jq documentation.

For anything more complex: Use a decent scripting language of your choice, which supports JSON-processing.

Thanks for the reply. That's great!

I'm sure our resident expert on JSON in shell scripts, stomp can help you then, as long as you use his favorite jq tool (see above).

Hello again.

Well, I'm already using it (since yesterday which was when I found it - jq I mean).

So, I'll be a little bit more accurate about the thing.
The app is to process bitcoin payments to several bitcoin addresses. These addresses are in a file. One address per line.
The code I have (I cannot share it right now because I'm at work and the code I have in Github is not updated with the one I have in my personal laptop) reads the file, line by line, counts how many lines it read, then checks how much BTC there is in a certain wallet and divides that value by the number of addresses loaded from the file. This way, the available BTC amount is equally sent to as many addresses that were loaded from the file.

The only thing missing in my script is building this long command.
I'll share the code I have at the moment, later when I get home.

But the way I built it was by preppending the leading special chars to a variable, then appending each address loaded from the file already wrapped in braces, backslash and double quotes. Something like:

Code:

load_addresses # this is a function
BTCsendVal=$(printf "%.8f" $(bitcoin-cli -getbalance / $numberAddr | bc -l)) # evaluate the amount of BTC to send to each loaded address
com_params="\"\" \"{"
count=0
for i in $addr_list
count++
do
    if [[ $count -eq $numberAddr ]]; then
         com_param+="\\\"$i\\\""
    else
        com_param+="\\\"$i\\\","
done
com_params+="$params_n"
com_params+="params_[n+1]"
#etc etc

........

I might have missed some details in this code. I can't remember all the details accuratelly of the code I have, but this way, the command parameters will be seen as a single very long string!

I have some questions before I can even start playing with 'jq'.

The first parameter/argument is a double quotes with nothing inside it. Docs says its for back compatibility. But is this first parameter also considered a JSON element/or whatever it can be called?

What about the other parameters that are not wrapped in {}s or []s ???? Are those also to be processed by 'jq'?

Notes: