how to create a JSON object from a TSV file containing key/value pairs with jq

Question

I a have a short TSV stream that outputs key/value pairs and I would like to create a JSON object out of it, with jq.

For now I have this code, which generates a stack of JSON objects:

printf '%s\t%s\n' key1 val1 key2 val2 |

jq -R 'rtrimstr("\n") | split("\t") | { (.[0]): .[1] }'

{
  "key1": "val1"
}
{
  "key2": "val2"
}

I can pipe it to jq -s 'add' for getting my expected output:

{
  "key1": "val1",
  "key2": "val2"
}

But, is it possible to get this output with a single jq call?

Answer 1

Use -n and inputs to access the stream item by item.

For instance using reduce:

jq -Rn 'reduce (inputs/"\t") as [$k,$v] ({}; .[$k] = $v)'

Or using from_entries:

jq -Rn '[inputs/"\t" | {key: .[0], value: .[1]}] | from_entries'