From time to time I have a need to do some fixes in my json data. In a world of flat files I do this with grep/sed/awk tool chain. How to handle it for JSON? Searching for a solution I came across the JSONPath. It quite mature tool (from 2007) but I haven’t hear about it so I decided to share my experience with others. First of all you can try it without pain online: http://jsonpath.curiousconcept.com/. Full syntax is described at http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/ But also you can download python binding and run it from command line:
$ sudo apt-get install python-jsonpath-rw
$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
$ sudo easy_install -U jsonpath
After that you can use inside python or with simple cli wrapper:
#!/usr/bin/python import sys, json, jsonpath path = sys.argv[1] result = jsonpath.jsonpath(json.load(sys.stdin), path) print json.dumps(result, indent=2)
… you can use it in your shell e.g. for json:
{ "store": { "book": [ { "category": "reference", "author": "Nigel Rees", "title": "Sayings of the Century", "price": 8.95 }, { "category": "fiction", "author": "Evelyn Waugh", "title": "Sword of Honour", "price": 12.99 }, { "category": "fiction", "author": "Herman Melville", "title": "Moby Dick", "isbn": "0-553-21311-3", "price": 8.99 }, { "category": "fiction", "author": "J. R. R. Tolkien", "title": "The Lord of the Rings", "isbn": "0-395-19395-8", "price": 22.99 } ], "bicycle": { "color": "red", "price": 19.95 } } }
You can print only book nodes with price lower than 10 by:
$ jsonpath '$..book[?(@.price < 10)]' < books.json
Result:
[ { "category": "reference", "price": 8.95, "title": "Sayings of the Century", "author": "Nigel Rees" }, { "category": "fiction", "price": 8.99, "title": "Moby Dick", "isbn": "0-553-21311-3", "author": "Herman Melville" } ]
Have a nice JSON hacking!