Convert properties to JSON using jq. #properties $json #jq

README-convert-properties-to-json-using-jq.md

README

Say we have a properties file at foo.properties.

First, clean-up whitespace and empty lines, store in foo-1.properties:

cat foo.properties | \
    sed 's/[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*/=/' | \
    sed 's/[[:space:]]*$//' | \
    sed '/^$/d' > foo-1.properties

Pipe to jq using raw mode (-R, to treat input as raw text lines) and slurp mode (-s to merge stream of objects into a single object)

cat foo-1.properties | \
    jq -R -s 'split("\n") | map(split("=")) | map({(.[0]): .[1]}) | add' > foo.json

See also: https://jqplay.org/s/v3fqcUGzvx

Note:
Since jq escapes \ as \\ you will lose your control characters such as \n which become \\n. To fix this you can do a gsub search & replace in the last map call on the string values like so map({(.[0]): (.[1] | gsub("\\\\n";"\n"))})