Getting a single value from a JSON object using JSONPath

but I always get an array:

That is meant to happen. As you can read in this documentation, under 'Result' (almost at the bottom):

Please note, that the return value of jsonPath is an array, which is also a valid JSON structure. So you might want to apply jsonPath to the resulting structure again or use one of your favorite array methods as sort with it.

So basically it will always return an array. If you need the data as an other type, e.g. a String in this case, you will have to do the conversion yourself I'm afraid.

I was using the Java implementation of JSONPath and got to the very same issue. What worked for me was to add '[0]' to the json path string. So in your case:

$.single.name[0]