jq: Because Parsing JSON Shouldn’t Require a PhD

If you’ve ever tried to extract a single value from a massive JSON blob using grep and sed, you know the pain. Meet jq - the command-line JSON processor that actually makes sense.

# Get all user names from a JSON API response
curl -s https://api.github.com/users | jq '.[].login'

# Extract nested data with ease
echo '{"users":[{"name":"Alice","age":30},{"name":"Bob","age":25}]}' | jq '.users[] | select(.age > 25) | .name'

Why This Matters

• Lightweight: ~1MB binary that does one thing really well
• Powerful: Complex transformations with a clean, functional syntax
• Ubiquitous: Available in every package manager, runs everywhere
• Fast: Written in C, handles massive JSON files without breaking a sweat

The Good Stuff

Filtering & Selection: Extract exactly what you need with .foo.bar[0] syntax that just works.

Transformations: Map, reduce, group - functional programming for your data pipeline.

Format Conversion: JSON to CSV, YAML, or any custom format you can dream up.

Streaming: Handle enormous JSON files without loading everything into memory.

Real Talk

This isn’t just another Unix tool - it’s the missing piece that makes JSON actually usable in shell scripts. If you’re still using python -m json.tool or writing throwaway Python scripts to parse JSON, do yourself a favor and learn jq.

The learning curve is real (the syntax can be weird), but once it clicks, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Bottom Line: Essential tool for anyone who touches APIs or JSON data. Period.

Posted by RyanMalloy on Friday January 18, @04:20PM from the dept-of-json-wrangling dept.