jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor. A jq program is a “filter”: it takes an input, and produces an output. There are a lot of builtin filters for extracting a particular field of an object, or converting a number to a string, or various other standard tasks.
Filters can be combined in various ways – you can pipe the output of one filter into another filter, or collect the output of a filter into an array.
Some filters produce multiple results, for instance there’s one that produces all the elements of its input array. Piping that filter into a second runs the second filter for each element of the array. Generally, things that would be done with loops and iteration in other languages are just done by gluing filters together in jq.
jq is like sed for JSON data – you can use it to slice and filter and map and transform structured data with the same ease that sed, awk, grep and friends let you play with text.
jq can mangle the data format that you have into the one that you want with very little effort, and the program to do so is often shorter and simpler than you’d expect.
The input to jq is parsed as a sequence of whitespace-separated JSON values which are passed through the provided filter one at a time. The output(s) of the filter are written to standard out, again as a sequence of whitespace-separated JSON data.
Website: stedolan.github.io/jq
Support: Manual, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Stephen Dolan
License: MIT License
jq is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| JSON Tools | |
|---|---|
| jq | Lightweight and flexible JSON processor. It's like sed for JSON |
| fx | JSON viewer with streaming and mouse support |
| jaq | jq clone focused on correctness, speed, and simplicity. |
| gron | Transforms JSON into discrete assignments to make it easier to grep |
| gojq | Pure Go implementation of jq |
| jless | Command-line JSON viewer written in Rust |
| jnv | Navigates JSON offering a viewer and filter editor |
| JSON Editor | View, edit, format, and validate JSON |
| jid | JSON incremental digger by using filtering queries |
| jo | Small utility to create JSON objects |
| faq | Billed as a more flexible jq supporting additional formats |
| jello | Filter JSON and JSON Lines data with Python syntax |
| jq but an interoperable configuration format transcoder | |
| json-tui | JSON terminal UI |
| jiq | Interactive JSON query tool |
| emuto | Small language for manipulating and restructuring JSON and other data |
| svelte-jsoneditor | View, edit, format, transform, and validate JSON |
| qo | Query JSON, CSV, and TSV files using SQL |
| Janice | Desktop app for viewing large JSON files |
| unqery | Query and transform JSON data |
| Twig | Terminal JSON viewer and YAML viewer |
| jtc | Extract, manipulate and transform source JSON |
| pyfx | Python-native TUI JSON viewer |
| kirill | JSON validator |
| jshon | Parses, reads and creates JSON. It's designed to be as usable as possible |
| jsawk | Like awk, but for JSON |
| jqp | TUI playground to experiment with jq |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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