jp

Alternatively, maybe you can get warmer with JMESPath, which has jp as its command line interface https://github.com/jmespath/jp . The good thing about the JMESPath syntax is that it is the standard one when processing JSON in software like Ansible, Grafana, perhaps some more.

I have a hard time suggesting such a thing, because I find JMESPath incredibly inferior to jq's expressiveness, but if you're in the AWS ecosystem much, you may enjoy https://github.com/jmespath/jp#readme which uses the same query language as does awscli (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-usage-f...). That may at least pay more dividends than keeping jq's language in your head where it will only ever be used by jq

At least jaq[1] gojq[2], and jp[3] (this last of which is jmespath rather than the jq query language) [1]: https://github.com/01mf02/jaq [2]: https://github.com/itchyny/gojq [3]: https://github.com/jmespath/jp

There is also "JP" https://github.com/jmespath/jp which follows the jmespath standard

There’s also jp, which interprets JMESPath: https://github.com/jmespath/jp This one has the advantage of being natively understood by aws-cli, meaning you can pass a JMESPath to an AWS call and only receive the filtered / transformed result back.

Stepping just a little beyond regular ‘loop and filter’ is already difficult without consulting the manual each time — being exacerbated by the impossibility of finding those things in the manual without skimming through most of it. Making an ‘if’ for variations in the input structure is easily a twenty-minute job. Outside of the basic features, Jq's syntax is increasingly arcane and unintuitive—maybe those working with it daily do remember the ‘advanced’ stuff, but I don't. I actually collected a sizable list of alternatives to Jq: https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath https://github.com/antonmedv/fx https://github.com/simeji/jid https://github.com/jmespath/jp https://jsonnet.org https://github.com/borkdude/jet https://github.com/jzelinskie/faq https://github.com/dflemstr/rq https://github.com/mgdm/htmlq And there's someone else's list

For everyone pining for a Jq with a different syntax: I have a bunch of links to alternatives collected, you might want to try some of them (some may be for different things than JSON): https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-jq https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath https://github.com/antonmedv/fx https://github.com/fiatjaf/jiq https://github.com/simeji/jid https://github.com/jmespath/jp https://github.com/cube2222/jql https://jsonnet.org https://github.com/borkdude/jet https://github.com/jzelinskie/faq https://github.com/dflemstr/rq Personally I think that next time I might just fire up Hy and use its functional capabilities.

Another option which looks interesting: https://github.com/jmespath/jp I haven't used it yet, but the syntax seems simpler than some.

Personally I prefer https://github.com/jmespath/jp - it has a bit saner syntax based on an actual standard (at least for me it's easier to remember than jq). And perhaps more importantly it doesn't mess with your numbers! Some other comment mentioned doubles, but I had a problem with Longs, jq would silently truncate them when they became to large to fit inside a float (I was working with random Long numbers used as secrets in some schema so it happened quite quickly in my use case).

I really love the jq language but I totally agree that the complexity skyrockets once you peek at the 'advanced' features because this neat little query language turns into a full programming language with io, variables, modules, functions. Very similar to AWK. If you want something that is just a good query language then I would highly recommend JMESPath. It's a little harder to grok initially but the spec is extremely detailed, comes with examples, and there's libraries for all the 'popular' programming languages. A good CLI tool that wraps the Go library is https://github.com/jmespath/jp

I know, right? I've switched to using jp: its syntax is based on an actual standard and it clicks much more with me than jq's syntax. https://github.com/jmespath/jp

Besides's this projects cli, jp (https://github.com/jmespath/jp), I see jl (https://github.com/chrisdone/jl) and jq (https://github.com/stedolan/jq/) in the comments. I wonder if anyone has had experience with all three (or even just one) and can comment on their experiences?