jq cheatsheet

jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor, it is also described as sed for JSON data: You can use it to slice and filter and map and transform structured data with the same ease.

We’ll use below endpoint as example https://reqres.in/api/users which provides response in json format.

Beautify json

curl https://reqres.in/api/users | jq .

Print value of top level attribute

curl https://reqres.in/api/users | jq .page

output:

1

Print all items in top level array element data

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq .data

Print key, values in array element data

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data[] | {first_name,last_name}'

Print only values from array element data

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data[].first_name'

Print first_name and last_name as text instead of json

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data[] | {first_name,last_name} | join(" ")'

Get all records for person with first_name Eve

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data[] | select(.first_name == "Eve")'

Get email of a person with first_name Eve

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data[] | select(.first_name == "Eve") | {email}'

Extract all keys from json

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq keys

Print range from array data

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data[1:3]'

Sort array data by first_name

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data | sort_by(.first_name)'

Count elements in subscripted array data

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' | jq '.data | length'

output:

6

Try these examples here as well — json is pre-loaded.