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jq Cheet Sheet

Processing JSON using jq

jq is useful to slice, filter, map and transform structured json data.

Installing jq

On Mac OS

brew install jq

On AWS Linux

Not available as yum install on our current AMI. It should be on the latest AMI though: https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/2015.09-release-notes/

Installing from the source proved to be tricky.

Useful arguments

When running jq, the following arguments may become handy:

Argument Description
--version Output the jq version and exit with zero.
--sort-keys Output the fields of each object with the keys in sorted order.

Basic concepts

The syntax for jq is pretty coherent:

Syntax Description
, Filters separated by a comma will produce multiple independent outputs
? Will ignores error if the type is unexpected
[] Array construction
{} Object construction
+ Concatenate or Add
- Difference of sets or Substract
length Size of selected element
| Pipes are used to chain commands in a similar fashion than bash

Dealing with json objects

Description Command
Display all keys jq 'keys'
Adds + 1 to all items jq 'map_values(.+1)'
Delete a key jq 'del(.foo)'
Convert an object to array to_entries | map([.key, .value])

Dealing with fields

Description Command
Concatenate two fields fieldNew=.field1+' '+.field2

Dealing with json arrays

Slicing and Filtering

Description Command
All jq .[]
First jq '.[0]'
Range jq '.[2:4]'
First 3 jq '.[:3]'
Last 2 jq '.[-2:]'
Before Last jq '.[-2]'
Select array of int by value jq 'map(select(. >= 2))'
Select array of objects by value ** jq '.[] | select(.id == "second")'**
Select by type ** jq '.[] | numbers' ** with type been arrays, objects, iterables, booleans, numbers, normals, finites, strings, nulls, values, scalars

Mapping and Transforming

Description Command
Add + 1 to all items jq 'map(.+1)'
Delete 2 items jq 'del(.[1, 2])'
Concatenate arrays jq 'add'
Flatten an array jq 'flatten'
Create a range of numbers jq '[range(2;4)]'
Display the type of each item jq 'map(type)'
Sort an array of basic type jq 'sort'
Sort an array of objects jq 'sort_by(.foo)'
Group by a key - opposite to flatten jq 'group_by(.foo)'
Minimun value of an array jq 'min' .See also min, max, min_by(path_exp), max_by(path_exp)
Remove duplicates jq 'unique' or jq 'unique_by(.foo)' or jq 'unique_by(length)'
Reverse an array jq 'reverse'
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