how to parse a JSON String with jq (or other alternatives)?

jq has the fromjson builtin for this:

jq '.c | fromjson | .id' myFile.json

fromjson was added in version 1.4.

You can use the raw output (-r) that will unescape characters:

jq -r .c myfile.json | jq .id

ADDENDUM: This has the advantage that it works in jq 1.3 and up; indeed, it should work in every version of jq that has the -r option.

Motivation: you want to parse JSON string - you want to escape a JSON object that's wrapped with quotes and represented as a String buffer, and convert it to a valid JSON object. For example:

some JSON unescaped string :

"{\"name\":\"John Doe\",\"position\":\"developer\"}"

the expected result ( a JSON object ):

{"name":"John Doe","position":"developer"}

Solution: In order to escape a JSON string and convert it into a valid JSON object use the sed tool in command line and use regex expressions to remove/replace specific characters:

cat current_json.txt | sed -e 's/\\\"/\"/g' -e 's/^.//g' -e 's/.$//g'

s/\\\"/\"/g replacing all backslashes and quotes ( \" ) into quotes only (")

s/^.//g replacing the first character in the stream to none character

s/.$//g replacing the last character in the stream to none character