Awesome
json
is a fast CLI tool for working with JSON. It is a single-file node.js
script with no external deps (other than
node.js itself). A quick taste:
$ echo '{"foo":"bar"}' | json
{
"foo": "bar"
}
$ echo '{"foo":"bar"}' | json foo
bar
$ echo '{"fred":{"age":42}}' | json fred.age # '.' for property access
42
$ echo '{"age":10}' | json -e 'this.age++'
{
"age": 11
}
# `json -ga` (g == group, a == array) for streaming mode
$ echo '{"latency":32,"req":"POST /widgets"}
{"latency":10,"req":"GET /ping"}
' | json -gac 'this.latency > 10' req
POST /widgets
Features:
- pretty-printing JSON
- natural syntax (like JS code) for extracting particular values
- get details on JSON syntax errors (handy for config files)
- filter input JSON (see
-e
and-c
options) - fast stream processing (see
-ga
) - JSON validation
- in-place file editing
See https://trentm.com/json for full docs and examples as a man page.
Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=trentmick" target="_blank">@trentmick</a> for updates to json.
Installation
-
Get node.
-
npm install -g json
Note: This used to be called 'jsontool' in the npm registry, but as of version 8.0.0 it has taken over the 'json' name. See npm Package Name below.
OR manually:
-
Get the 'json' script and put it on your PATH somewhere (it is a single file with no external dependencies). For example:
cd ~/bin curl -L https://github.com/trentm/json/raw/master/lib/json.js > json chmod 755 json
You should now have "json" on your PATH:
$ json --version
json 9.0.0
WARNING for Ubuntu/Debian users: There is a current bug in Debian stable
such that "apt-get install nodejs" installed a nodejs
binary instead of a
node
binary. You'll either need to create a symlink for node
, change the
json
command's shebang line to "#!/usr/bin/env nodejs" or use
chrislea's PPA as
discussed on issue #56. You can also do "apt-get install nodejs-legacy" to install symlink for node
with apt.
Test suite
npm test # or 'make test'
This is using node-tap, so you can use all its options, for example filtering which tests to run:
npm test -- -g stream
License
MIT (see the fine LICENSE.txt file).
Module Usage
Since v1.3.1 you can use "json" as a node.js module:
var json = require('json');
However, so far the module API isn't that useful and the CLI is the primary focus.
npm Package Name
Once upon a time, json
was a different thing (see zpoley's json-command
here), and this module was
called jsontool
in npm. As of version 8.0.0 of this module, npm install json
means this tool.
If you see documentation referring to jsontool
, it is most likely
referring to this module.
Alternatives you might prefer
- jq: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/
- json:select: https://jsonselect.org/
- json-command: https://github.com/zpoley/json-command
- JSONPath: https://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/, https://code.google.com/p/jsonpath/wiki/Javascript
- jsawk: https://github.com/micha/jsawk
- jshon: https://kmkeen.com/jshon/
- json2: https://github.com/vi/json2
- fx: https://github.com/antonmedv/fx