Parse JSON with JQ

September 26, 2018

2 min read

jq is a bash program that assists with the parsing of JSON formatted data. This example shows how to log the start script of an npm package to the terminal.

#Quickly view NPM Scripts in a repository

cat will print contents of package.json to the console.

cat package.json
{
  "name": "repository",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production webpack --progress --config webpack/prod.js",
    "start": "cross-env NODE_ENV=local webpack-serve --config webpack/dev.js",
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "lodash": "4.17.10"
  }
}

If you pipe data into jq it will pretty print it with syntax highlighting.

cat package.json | jq
{
  "name": "repository",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production webpack --progress --config webpack/prod.js",
    "start": "cross-env NODE_ENV=local webpack-serve --config webpack/dev.js",
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "lodash": "4.17.10"
  }
}

Finally jq lets you parse the JSON via dot notation.

cat package.json | jq .scripts
{
  "build": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production webpack --progress --config webpack/prod.js",
  "start": "cross-env NODE_ENV=local webpack-serve --config webpack/dev.js",
}

cat package.json | jq .scripts.start
"cross-env NODE_ENV=local webpack-serve --config webpack/dev.js"

#sources

https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/