What are good CLI tools for JSON?

I just found this:

http://stedolan.github.io/jq/

"jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor."

2014 update:

@user456584 mentioned:

There's also the 'json' command (e.g. 'jsontool'). I tend to prefer it over jq. Very UNIX-y. Here's a link to the project: github.com/trentm/json –

in the json README at http://github.com/trentm/json there is a long list of similar things

  • jq: http://stedolan.github.io/jq/
  • json:select: http://jsonselect.org/
  • jsonpipe: https://github.com/dvxhouse/jsonpipe
  • json-command: https://github.com/zpoley/json-command
  • JSONPath: http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/, http://code.google.com/p/jsonpath/wiki/Javascript
  • jsawk: https://github.com/micha/jsawk
  • jshon: http://kmkeen.com/jshon/
  • json2: https://github.com/vi/json2
  • fx: https://github.com/antonmedv/fx

I have created a module specifically designed for command-line JSON manipulation:

https://github.com/ddopson/underscore-cli

  • FLEXIBLE - THE "swiss-army-knife" tool for processing JSON data - can be used as a simple pretty-printer, or as a full-powered Javascript command-line
  • POWERFUL - Exposes the full power and functionality of underscore.js (plus underscore.string)
  • SIMPLE - Makes it simple to write JS one-liners similar to using "perl -pe"
  • CHAINED - Multiple command invokations can be chained together to create a data processing pipeline
  • MULTI-FORMAT - Rich support for input / output formats - pretty-printing, strict JSON, etc [coming soon]
  • DOCUMENTED - Excellent command-line documentation with multiple examples for every command

It allows you to do powerful things really easily:

cat earthporn.json | underscore select '.data .title'
# [ 'Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon, Iceland [OC] [683x1024]',
#   'New town, Edinburgh, Scotland [4320 x 3240]',
#   'Sunrise in Bryce Canyon, UT [1120x700] [OC]',
# ...
#   'Kariega Game Reserve, South Africa [3584x2688]',
#   'Valle de la Luna, Chile [OS] [1024x683]',
#   'Frosted trees after a snowstorm in Laax, Switzerland [OC] [1072x712]' ]

cat earthporn.json | underscore select '.data .title' | underscore count
# 25

underscore map --data '[1, 2, 3, 4]' 'value+1'
# prints: [ 2, 3, 4, 5 ]

underscore map --data '{"a": [1, 4], "b": [2, 8]}' '_.max(value)'
# [ 4, 8 ]

echo '{"foo":1, "bar":2}' | underscore map -q 'console.log("key = ", key)'
# key = foo
# key = bar

underscore pluck --data "[{name : 'moe', age : 40}, {name : 'larry', age : 50}, {name : 'curly', age : 60}]" name
# [ 'moe', 'larry', 'curly' ]

underscore keys --data '{name : "larry", age : 50}'
# [ 'name', 'age' ]

underscore reduce --data '[1, 2, 3, 4]' 'total+value'
# 10

It has a very nice command-line help system and is extremely flexible. It is well tested and ready for use; however, I'm still building out a few of the features like alternatives for input/output format, and merging in my template handling tool (see TODO.md). If you have any feature requests, comment on this post or add an issue in github. I've designed out a pretty extensive feature-set, but I'd be glad to prioritize features that are needed by members of the community.

Tags:

Command Line

Xpath

Json

Xslt

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