Get all instances of text in curly braces between brackets - regex

Question

Let's say I have some text like this:
{
"source": "Analytics 13 {Employee_Info.acl} {Employee_Data}",
"lastRecNo": "3",
"columns": {
"ID": "numeric",
"NAME": "character",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "date",
"ROLE": "character"
},
"data": [{
"ID": 1,
"NAME": "Bill Smith",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-10-01",
"ROLE": "Director {Regional},{Call Center}"
},
{
"ID": 2,
"NAME": "Ellen Jones",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-07-01",
"ROLE": "Manager"
},
{
"ID": 3,
"NAME": "Sam Edwards",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-09-01",
"ROLE": "Supervisor"
}]
}
And I want to RegEx match every object inside the "data" array (including the curly braces).
So the first match would be:
{
"ID": 1,
"NAME": "Bill Smith",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-10-01",
"ROLE": "Director {Regional},{Call Center}"
}
the second would be:
{
"ID": 2,
"NAME": "Ellen Jones",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-07-01",
"ROLE": "Manager"
}
and the third would be
{
"ID": 3,
"NAME": "Sam Edwards",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-09-01",
"ROLE": "Supervisor"
}
What regex pattern would I use to do that in PowerShell?
Notice the first match actually has some extra curly braces in the text of the "ROLE" field, which shouldn't interfere with the match.
I've tried this so far '(?<={).*?(?=})', but the first match is:
"source": "Analytics 13 {Employee_Info.acl
This result isn't a part of the "data" array and it doesn't include the curly braces in the match. I know I'm missing something that says "make sure we are inside the brackets/"data" array and I'm probably not taking into account the extra curly braces in the "ROLE" field in the first object of the "data" array that I want to ignore.

Answer 1

Your task can be easily done using ConvertFrom-Json and ConvertTo-Json cmdlets.
Here is a brief example:
First you get text file content to variable.
$JSON = #"
[
{
"source": "Analytics 13 {Employee_Info.acl} {Employee_Data}",
"lastRecNo": "3",
"columns": {
"ID": "numeric",
"NAME": "character",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "date",
"ROLE": "character"
},
"data": [{
"ID": 1,
"NAME": "Bill Smith",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-10-01",
"ROLE": "Director {Regional},{Call Center}"
},
{
"ID": 2,
"NAME": "Ellen Jones",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-07-01",
"ROLE": "Manager"
},
{
"ID": 3,
"NAME": "Sam Edwards",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-09-01",
"ROLE": "Supervisor"
}]
}
]
"#
Then you just perform converting from JSON using ConvertFrom-Json cmdlet.
ConvertFrom-Json -InputObject $JSON
Output:
source lastRecNo columns data
------ --------- ------- ----
Analytics 13 {Employee_Info.acl} {Employee_Data} 3 #{ID=numeric; NAME=character; EFFECTIVE_DATE=date; ROLE=character} {#{ID=1; NAME=Bill Smith; EFFECTIVE_DATE=2018-10-01; ROLE=Director {Regional},{Call Center}}, #...
You then can return items from DATA to JSON format using ConvertTo-Json cmdlet. All together.
$PSObject = ConvertFrom-Json -InputObject $JSON
foreach ($item in $PSObject.data){
ConvertTo-Json $item
}
Output:
{
"ID": 1,
"NAME": "Bill Smith",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-10-01",
"ROLE": "Director {Regional},{Call Center}"
}
{
"ID": 2,
"NAME": "Ellen Jones",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-07-01",
"ROLE": "Manager"
}
{
"ID": 3,
"NAME": "Sam Edwards",
"EFFECTIVE_DATE": "2018-09-01",
"ROLE": "Supervisor"
}
You can now add filter conditions for DATA items in foreach loop.