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fj

Flatten your JSON.

fj flattens JSON into a value and its full path per line, so data can be worked on using UNIX tools such as grep/awk/cut/etc.

❯ curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/golang/go/commits?per_page=1" | fj | grep commit.author
json[0].commit.author.name  "Josh Bleecher Snyder"
json[0].commit.author.email "[email protected]"
json[0].commit.author.date  "2021-06-30T16:44:30Z"

fj can un-flatten too, which is useful to get a subset of JSON:

❯ curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/golang/go/commits?per_page=1" | fj | grep commit.author | fj -u | jq
[
  {
    "commit": {
      "author": {
        "name": "Josh Bleecher Snyder",
        "email": "[email protected]",
        "date": "2021-06-30T16:44:30Z"
      }
    }
  }
]

Installation

  1. Download latest release for Linux, Mac, Windows or FreeBSD,
  2. Put the binary in your $PATH (e.g. in /usr/local/bin) to make it easy to use:

Alternatively, if you have Go compiler:

❯ go install pitr.ca/fj@latest # OR
❯ go get -u pitr.ca/fj         # legacy way

Usage

Flatten JSON file or stdin:

❯ fj file.json
❯ cat file.json | fj

Or many JSON files. Use -s or --stream to treat input as a stream of JSON documents:

❯ fj -s file1.json file2.json file3.json

Use grep to search, diff <(fj file1.json) <(fj file2.json) to diff, and other tools such as awk/sort/uniq/fzf.

FAQ

Why shouldn't I just use gron?

gron is a very similar tool. However, fj is different from it in a few key ways:

  • fj does not keep the whole JSON object in memory, which allows it to be 10-20 times faster than gron.

    ❯ hyperfine --warmup 5 'gron testdata/big.json' 'fj testdata/big.json'
Benchmark #1: gron testdata/big.json
  Time (mean ± σ):     136.2 ms ±   1.9 ms    [User: 57.1 ms, System: 97.2 ms]
  Range (min … max):   132.9 ms … 140.2 ms    21 runs

Benchmark #2: fj testdata/big.json
  Time (mean ± σ):       9.1 ms ±   0.9 ms    [User: 4.9 ms, System: 2.4 ms]
  Range (min … max):     7.8 ms …  12.2 ms    203 runs

Summary
  'fj testdata/big.json' ran
   14.93 ± 1.48 times faster than 'gron testdata/big.json'

  • fj does not preserve array structures by padding with null.

    ❯ echo '[1,2,3,4,5]' | gron | grep 5 | gron -u
[
   null,
   null,
   null,
   null,
   5
]
❯ echo '[1,2,3,4,5]' | fj | grep 5 | fj -u
[5]

  • fj does not try to convert JSON into valid JavaScript that can be pasted into JS console. There are no extra semicolons and array/object initializations.

Why shouldn't I just use jq?

jq is a great and powerful tool with its own language. fj simply flattens (and un-flattens) JSON, and is expected to integrate with existing tools.