Multiple `if` conditions with `jq` and `grep` incorrectly matches and returns true when it shouldn't match at all

I have a json file:

cat myjsonfile.json

{
    "directory": true,
    "condition": "",
    "specialCondition": "",
    "dataFiles": "",
    "nonstandard-protocol": true
}

specialCondition is standardized and can be empty or have a matched or unmatched state.

I simply want to translate those conditions to another state when nonstandard-protocol is false.

So I wrote this in my bash script.

if [[  "jq '.specialCondition' myjsonfile.json | grep -q 'matched'"  &&  "jq '."nonstandard-protocol"' myjsonfile.json | grep -q 'false'"  ]]; then echo 'MATCHED' | cat > protocol_result.txt; fi
if [[  "jq '.specialCondition' myjsonfile.json | grep -q 'unmatched'"  &&  "jq '."nonstandard-protocol"' myjsonfile.json | grep -q 'false'"  ]]; then echo 'NOTMATCHED' | cat > protocol_result.txt; fi

However, this returns incorrect results. When I run the script, I always see that first it writes MATCHED to my protocol_result.txt and then with the second if line it writes NOTMATCHED to the file! While it shouldn’t write anything at all… Why is this happening?

>Solution :

Take the if statements to jq and have it output whatever you want.

The following example prints nothing "" if nonstandard-protocol is true, or specialCondition is neither matched nor unmatched. Otherwise it’ll print MATCHED or NOTMATCHED, depending on the content of specialCondition:

jq --raw-output '
  if ."nonstandard-protocol" then ""
  else if .specialCondition == "matched" then "MATCHED"
    elif .specialCondition == "unmatched" then "NOTMATCHED"
    else "" end
  end
' myjsonfile.json > protocol_result.txt

Demo

Note: Using "" will print nothing as expected, but followed by a newline because it had an output (which essentially is an empty line, then). If you don’t want that, change "" to empty.