Linux shell script plugin with JSON output

Is it possible to create a shell plugin that outputs JSON? I've attempted to do this but it does not seem to work as expected. If I alter the script to output the data with | separators then it seems to work but I'd rather use JSON if possible.

A sample of the output I'm generating is as follows

getSite24x7PluginData.sh
{
"data": {
"searchDuration":1.935},
"plugin_version": 1,
"heartbeat_required": "true",
"units": {
"searchDuration":"seconds"}
}