Tag: sed

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!