Populating variables from another file reading user input in bash/shell script

Question

I am giving the user the possibility to answers some questions so that I can perform the according cURL requests and create what is needed accordingly.

In this way:

~functions.sh

echo "Question number 1?"
read question1
echo "Question number 2?"
read question2

The script is organised in a couple of files:

functions.sh, where I store all the functions
flow.sh, where the questions are asked and the previous functions are called in order
credentials.sh, where I store the api key credentials, api url etc.
env.sh, where I am hoping to store the env configuration that needs to be dynamically generated...

Unfortunately I am pretty much new to that as I come from a Frontend Background so I Am not aware or can't figure out/find on here, how to achieve the following:

I would need to send a cURL request based on one of the users answers, and that's easily done just by calling ie {$question1} inside one of the functions of functions.sh that is later called in the main flow.sh after putting the file as a source...

Unfortunately, when it comes to populating a multiline environment configuration in a separate file to be later be sent as a json in the cURL it gets out of my comfort zone...

Id need so send something along the lines of

curl -X POST "https//api.url"
-H "headers"
--data '{"content":"'{$env}'"}'

Where $env is the env.sh file, json valid, and populated with the variables read before from user input accordingly...

To solve the multi line json problem maybe I could use the following:

$( awk '{printf "%s\\n", $0}' ./env.sh )

Still I am clueless on how to populate such file form user read and echo it inside that json part in the cURL...

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 26 '18 at 09:29

You could use awk to directly save correct JSON data to env.sh (partly taken from Dr.K's answer to this other question):

echo "Question number 1?"
read question1
echo "Question number 2?"
read question2
echo "Question number 3?"
read question3

awk ' BEGIN { print "[" ; }                     \
      { print  " {"                             \
        print  "   \"Question1\" : \""     $question1  "\","   \
        print  "   \"Question2\" : \""   $question2  "\","   \
        print  "   \"Question3\" : \""  $question3  "\""   \
        print  " }"                             \
      }                                         \
      END { print "]" } '  env.sh

And then this should work correctly as JSON:

curl -X POST "https//api.url"
-H "headers"
--data '{"content":"{$env}"}'

and the data payload should be like this:

{
  content: [
    {
      "Question1" : "User answer 1",
      "Question2" : "User answer 2",
      "Question3" : "User answer 3"
    }
  ]
}

Is this what you had in mind?

I would like to keep the env.sh in a separate file for the user/me to just copy and paste their .env configuration and the script to take care of everything by itself instead of "hardcoding" it in the questions — Mel Macaluso, Oct 26 '18 at 09:33

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '18 at 20:09

For anyone who ends up here what I did was:

Creating a separate file where I set a variable and I cat the EOF inside of that.

env=$( cat <<EOF
multi
line
content
goes
here
EOF
)

export env

Then I generate a valid json through jq

generate_json() {
  newenv="$( jq -nc --arg str "$env" '{"content": $str}' )"
}

and finally I use $newenv in the curl straight away:

example_curl() {
  curl -X PUT "https://apiendpoint.co.uk" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer 123123" \
  --data "${newenv}"

}

Populating variables from another file reading user input in bash/shell script

2 Answers2