"Invalid JSON primitive" error when converting JSON file

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 : [.<br>
> (system.argunment.exception)

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

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.

You will get this error if your input data starts like this:

data: [
{
...
},
{
...
}
]

You need to remove `data: ` (and only have `[`and `]` in this example):

[
{
...
},
{
...
}
]

I was also receiving this error, and upon investigating my json file noticed that some of the JSON was invalid. I was ending the last object in an array with a comma like so:

[{ ..},]

Removing the comma fixed the issue for myself.

So in short, invalid JSON caused this issue for me.