convert space separated list of names within a file to json formatted json file

Question

I have a space separated list of names generated by a program, I need to convert this list to json. I can not change the program generating the file output. I need to convert the output in file names.txt to json.

example: file output is called names.txt. context is below.

name1 name2 name3

The json expectation is

{
    "names": [
        "name1",
        "name2",
        "name3"
    ]
}

I have boto3 and jq at my disposal.

Answer 1

A jq solution could be simplefied by passing the 'string' as argument, then using split() to create an array like so:

jq -n --arg d "$(cat input)" '{ "names": $d | split(" ") }'

Local example:

$ cat input
name1 name2 name3
$
$ jq -n --arg d "$(cat input)" '{ "names": $d | split(" ") }'
{
  "names": [
    "name1",
    "name2",
    "name3"
  ]
}
$
$

Answer 2

Open the file and use dictionary comprehension

with open('names.txt') as file:
    d = {'names': name.split(' ') for name in file}
    
print(d)

Answer 3

You can just read the first line, split on whitespace, the create the desired dictionary

with open('names.txt') as f:
    names = f.readline().spilt()
    data = {'names': names}

To later get this into valid json you can use dump or dumps depending what you need to pass this to

>>> import json
>>> json.dumps(data)
'{"names": ["name1", "name2", "name3"]}'