"Invalid JSON primitive" error when converting JSON file

Question

When trying to convert a JSON file via PowerShell:

$json = Get-Content "C:\folder1\test.txt"  $json | ConvertFrom-Json   write-output $json 

I'm getting the following error:

invalid json primitive : [.
(system.argunment.exception)

Answer 1

I'm going out on a limb here, since you didn't provide your input data or the complete error message, but I guess that your problem is caused by a format mismatch between the output Get-Content provides and the input ConvertFrom-Json expects.

Get-Content reads the input file into an array of strings, whereas ConvertFrom-Json expects the JSON data in a single string. Also, piping $json into ConvertFrom-Json does not change the value of $json.

Change your code to the following and the error should disapear (provided there is no syntactical error in your input data):

$json = Get-Content 'C:\folder1\test.txt' | Out-String | ConvertFrom-Json  Write-Output $json 

Answer 2

You should check your JSON input file for characters that are not properly escaped with a "\"

I have also seen this issue with an input JSON file that was incorrectly formatted as follows:

{     Object1 } {     Object2 } 

Corrected format:

[{      Object1  },  {       Object2  }] 

Once the format was corrected, I had no more issues.