jq - adding values to multiple arrays of objects with creating missing objects and without removing existing values in arrays

Question

I need to add or update values in multiple arrays without removing existed array values. Also I need to create objects If they did not exist.

somefile.json:

{ "messages": { "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 1, 2, 3 ] }, "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 7, 8, 9 ] } } }

What I'm trying:

$ new='{"[email protected]":{"receivers":[1,2,3]},"[email protected]":{"receivers":[4,5,6]}}' $ jq --argjson data "$new" '.messages +=$data' somefile.json { "messages": { "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 1, 2, 3 ] }, "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 1, 2, 3 ] }, "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 4, 5, 6 ] } } }

Expected output:

{ "messages": { "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 1, 2, 3 ] }, "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 ] }, "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 4, 5, 6 ] } } }

Stéphane Chazelas · Accepted Answer · 2025-12-12 20:12:19Z

Sounds like a minor variations on your other question, which can be addressed the same with the Hash::Merge perl module (and I'm sure @Kusalananda will suggest the adaption of their jq answer shortly):

new='{"[email protected]":{"receivers":[1,2,3]},"[email protected]":{"receivers":[4,5,6]}}' NEW=$new perl -MList::Util=uniq -MJSON::PP -MHash::Merge -0777 -ne ' # jq-like pretty-printing: $j = JSON::PP->new->indent->indent_length(2)->space_after->canonical; # change the LEFT_PRECEDENT behaviour (the one used by default), # so that when merging an array with an array, the result is the # deduplicated list of the union of the elements, instead of just # the concatenation of the two lists: Hash::Merge::get_behavior_spec("LEFT_PRECEDENT") ->{ARRAY}->{ARRAY} = sub { [uniq @{$_[0]}, @{$_[1]}] }; $out = $j->decode($_); $out->{messages} = Hash::Merge::merge($out->{messages}, $j->decode($ENV{NEW})); print $j->encode($out)' somefile.json

Which gives:

{ "messages": { "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 1, 2, 3 ] }, "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 4, 5, 6 ] }, "[email protected]": { "receivers": [ 7, 8, 9, 1, 2, 3 ] } } }

The only change is that we're merging the $input->{messages} with the object in $new instead of merging the top-level objects.

Sorry, I find Perl syntax more like C++ which is too hard to read for me. Anyways thanks but I would really like to see a jq solution. — Zero
– Zero, Commented 14 hours ago

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