Google Speech bash script with base64 : Unexpected token.\n - bash

Question

I use the following code : https://github.com/sararob/ml-talk-demos/blob/master/speech/request.sh
to fit my own bash script.
cat <<EOF > $JSONFILENAME
{
"config": {
"encoding":"LINEAR16",
"sampleRateHertz":8000,
"languageCode": "nl-NL",
"speechContexts": {
"phrases": ['']
},
"maxAlternatives": 1
},
"audio": {
"content":
}
}
EOF
base64 $1 -w 0 > $SOUNDFILE.base64
#MYBASE64=$(base64 $1 -w 0)
sed -i $JSONFILENAME -e "/\"content\":/r $SOUNDFILE.base64"
#sed -i $JSONFILENAME -e "/\"content\":/r $MYBASE64"
curl -s -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data-binary #${JSONFILENAME} https://speech.googleapis.com/v1/speech:recognize?key=$API_KEY
The base64 output is correctly filled in by the sed command, however there are also newlines added.
This is the Google API response :
{
"error": {
"code": 400,
"message": "Invalid JSON payload received. Unexpected token.\n\": {\n \"content\":\nUklGRqTIAgBXQVZFZm10\n ^",
"status": "INVALID_ARGUMENT"
}
}
How can I make sure the "content" in my JSON-object is a continuous string of base64 ?

Answer 1

You should avoid updating JSON data with sed.
If you have valid JSON data (i.e you have to fix the lines "phrases": [] and "content": "", you could use jq instead:
jq ".audio.content = \"$(base64 -w 0 "$1")\"" "$JSONFILENAME"
I don't recommend sed, but in this case where a large entry must be appended, you could try this:
echo \"$(base64 -w 0 "$1")\" > "$SOUNDFILE.base64"
sed -i "$JSONFILENAME" -e "/\"content\":/r $SOUNDFILE.base64"
The google error you receive is likely due to the fact that the string is not double quoted.