cheatsheet

jq

$Basic Filtering

cat data.json | jq '.'

Pretty-print JSON (identity filter)

cat data.json | jq '.key'

Access a specific key

cat data.json | jq '.array[0]'

Access an element in an array by index

cat data.json | jq '.[].name'

Iterate over an array of objects and get 'name'

cat data.json | jq '.key1, .key2'

Get multiple keys (comma-separated)

cat data.json | jq '.[] | select(.status == "active")'

Filter array elements based on condition

$Object Construction

cat data.json | jq '{name: .user.name, id: .user.id}'

Create a new object from existing data

cat data.json | jq '.[] | {id, name}'

Shorthand for creating objects with same-named fields

cat data.json | jq '.[] | . + {new_key: "new_value"}'

Add a new key-value pair to each object in an array

$Array Manipulation

cat data.json | jq 'map(.id)'

Extract a specific field from all objects in an array

cat data.json | jq '[.array[] | .value]'

Extract values into a new array

cat data.json | jq 'length'

Get the length of an array or object

cat data.json | jq '.[] | length'

Get length of each item in array (if items are arrays/objects)

$Strings & Numbers

cat data.json | jq '.text | ascii_downcase'

Convert string to lowercase

cat data.json | jq '.price | tonumber'

Convert string to number

cat data.json | jq '.count + 10'

Perform arithmetic operations

$Advanced Filtering

cat data.json | jq 'del(.sensitive_data)'

Delete a field from an object

cat data.json | jq 'del(.[] | select(.id == 1))'

Delete an element from an array by condition

cat data.json | jq 'if .status == "active" then "Active" else "Inactive" end'

Conditional logic

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