How do I sum the values in an array of maps in jq?

Unless your jq has inputs, you will have to slurp the objects up using the -s flag. Then you'll have to do a fair amount of manipulation:

1. Each of the objects needs to be mapped out to key/value pairs
2. Flatten the pairs to a single array
3. Group up the pairs by key
4. Map out each group accumulating the values to a single key/value pair
5. Map the pairs back to an object

map(to_entries)
    | add
    | group_by(.key)
    | map({
          key: .[0].key,
          value: map(.value) | add
      })
    | from_entries

---

With jq 1.5, this could be greatly improved: You can do away with slurping and just read the inputs directly.

$ jq -n '
reduce (inputs | to_entries[]) as {$key,$value} ({}; .[$key] += $value)
' input.json

Since we're simply accumulating all the values in each of the objects, it'll be easier to just run through the key/value pairs of all the inputs, and add them all up.

I faced the same question when listing all artifacts from GitHub (see here for details) and want to sum their size.

curl https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/actions/artifacts \
     -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
     -H "Authorization:  token <your_pat_here>" \
     | jq '.artifacts | map(.size_in_bytes) | add'

Input:

{
  "total_count": 3,
  "artifacts": [
    {
      "id": 0000001,
      "node_id": "MDg6QXJ0aWZhY3QyNzUxNjI1",
      "name": "artifact-1",
      "size_in_bytes": 1,
      "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/actions/artifacts/2751625",
      "archive_download_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/actions/artifacts/2751625/zip",
      "expired": false,
      "created_at": "2020-03-10T18:21:23Z",
      "updated_at": "2020-03-10T18:21:24Z"
    },
    {
      "id": 0000002,
      "node_id": "MDg6QXJ0aWZhY3QyNzUxNjI0",
      "name": "artifact-2",
      "size_in_bytes": 2,
      "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/actions/artifacts/2751624",
      "archive_download_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/actions/artifacts/2751624/zip",
      "expired": false,
      "created_at": "2020-03-10T18:21:23Z",
      "updated_at": "2020-03-10T18:21:24Z"
    },
    {
      "id": 0000003,
      "node_id": "MDg6QXJ0aWZhY3QyNzI3NTk1",
      "name": "artifact-3",
      "size_in_bytes": 3,
      "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/docker/mercury-ui/actions/artifacts/2727595",
      "archive_download_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/actions/artifacts/2727595/zip",
      "expired": false,
      "created_at": "2020-03-10T08:46:08Z",
      "updated_at": "2020-03-10T08:46:09Z"
    }
  ]
}

Output:

6

Another approach, which illustrates the power of jq quite nicely, is to use a filter named "sum" defined as follows:

def sum(f): reduce .[] as $row (0; . + ($row|f) );

To solve the particular problem at hand, one could then use the -s (--slurp) option as mentioned above, together with the expression:

{"a": sum(.a), "b": sum(.b) }  # (2)

The expression labeled (2) only computes the two specified sums, but it is easy to generalize, e.g. as follows:

# Produce an object with the same keys as the first object in the 
# input array, but with values equal to the sum of the corresponding
# values in all the objects.
def sumByKey:
  . as $in
  | reduce (.[0] | keys)[] as $key
    ( {}; . + {($key): ($in | sum(.[$key]))})
;