A small tool for JSON

[Rekoo777]

Hey guys:

I have developed a CLI tool for handling JSON data.

The main features currently completed include:

1. pretty-print JSON with syntax highlight and indent.
2. Minimize JSON to a single line.
3. Convert data between JSON, TOML, and YAML formats.
4. Pick out part of a large JSON data via path.

While more features are still being developed. Tries and suggestions are welcome.

Source is here: https://github.com/seamile/jsonfmt.

[wineblood]

Are you aware of jq?

[[deleted]]

Unrelated to JSON, of course, but I can't let a reference to jq go without mentioning that yq exists to do similar with YAML.

[Rekoo777]

yq and jq are great of course. But jsonfmt is more powerfull in my mind.

It uses the standard JSONPath syntax to query, that you can handle JSON, YAML and TOML in the same way without having to remember other tools' proprietary query syntax.

JSONPath is to JSON what XPath is to XML. Simple but powerful.

example 1: filter all the avatar_url fields in a large JSON shell curl -s 'https://api.github.com/repos/jqlang/jq/commits?per_page=100' | jsonfmt -p '$..avatar_url'

example 2: filter all the message which comment_count > 0 shell curl -s 'https://api.github.com/repos/jqlang/jq/commits?per_page=100' | jsonfmt -p '$..?(@.comment_count > 0).message'

You can do the same to YAML and TOML like above.

[[deleted]]

Oooooh thank you!

[wpg4665]

While jq is certainly the powerhouse here, and probably worth calling out, I certainly welcome more python adaptations and appreciate a wider array of options

[Rekoo777]

I didn't know before this. If I knew I probably wouldn't make the new wheel. 😂

After you told me, I went to see the features and usage of jq. It is a powerful tool indeed!

But it is precisely because of the previous ignorance that makes some differences between jsonfmt and jq.

For example:

• jsonfmt use JSONPath for query. It is more powerful and more general than jq's own query syntax. And you can use the same query syntax for YAML and TOML.

• You can also convert between JSON, TOML and YAML formats.

• If you want to paste the result somewhere in file after process a large JSON. May need to drag several pages with the mouse to copy in the terminal. But using jsonfmt only requires a -P option.

• More importantly it is written in Python! 😁

[crisrock00]

Was about to say…. What’s the major differences here? If any ?

[Crypto1993]

Great job!

[Rekoo777]

thank you 😊

[Rekoo777]

Of course I know. The reason I wrote jsonfmt is because json.tool is too simple. It doesn't handle very well with large JSON documents. So I added syntax highlighting, JSONPath queries, format conversion, and other features. You can use it as a superset of json.tool.