Github Actions Fails with Reading Jtoken from Jsonreader Error

I am trying to follow the How to use GitHub Actions build matrix to deploy artifacts to multiple servers tutorial. I have finished halfway through the tutorial, however, I get the following error when it builds the app.

Error when evaluating 'strategy' for job 'prepare-release-on-servers'. (Line: 53, Col: 17): Error reading JToken from JsonReader. Path '', line 0, position 0.,(Line: 53, Col: 17): Unexpected value ''

I have checked the JSON file for validation and gone through the deployment file countless times.

Here is the deploy-application.yml file.

name: Deploy Application

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  create-deployment-artifacts:
    name: Create deployment artifacts
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    outputs:
      deployment-matrix: ${{ steps.export-deployment-matrix.outputs.deployment-matrix }}

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Compile CSS and Javascript
        run: |
          npm install
          npm run prod

      - name: Configure PHP 8.0
        uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
        with:
          php-version: 8.0
          extensions: mbstring, ctype, fileinfo, openssl, PDO, bcmath, json, tokenizer, xml
      - name: composer install
        run: |
          composer install --no-dev --no-interaction --prefer-dist
      - name: Create deployment artifact
        env:
          GITHUB_SHA: ${{ github.sha }}
        run: tar -czf "${GITHUB_SHA}".tar.gz --exclude=*.git --exclude=node_modules --exclude=tests *
      - name: Store artifact for distribution
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
        with:
          name: app-build
          path: ${{ github.sha }}.tar.gz
      - name: Export deployment matrix
        id: export-deployment-matrix
        run: |
          JSON="$(cat ./deployment-config.json)"
          JSON="${JSON//'%'/'%25'}"
          JSON="${JSON//$'\n'/'%0A'}"
          JSON="${JSON//$'\r'/'%0D'}"
          echo "::set-output name=deployment-matrix::$(echo $JSON)"
  prepare-release-on-servers:
    name: "${{ matrix.server.name }}: Prepare release"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: create-deployment-artifacts
    strategy:
      matrix:
        server: ${{ fromJson(needs.create-deployment-artifacts.outputs.deployment-matrix) }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/download-artifact@v2
        with:
          name: app-build

Here is the JSON file.

[{"name":"server-1","ip":"216.656.30.240","username":"root","password":"sdddssafilgwzxcxvgvggfdassa","port":"22","beforeHooks":"","afterHooks": "","path": "/var/www/html" }]

I cannot find the problem here. Any help would be nice. Thanks in advance.