gron

gron Make JSON greppable! gron transforms JSON into discrete assignments to make it easier to grep for what you want and see the absolute 'path' to it. It eases the exploration of APIs that return large blobs of JSON but have terrible documentation. ▶ gron "https://api.github.com/repos/tomnomnom/gron/commits?per_page=1" | fgrep "commit.author" json[0].commit.author = {}; json[0].commit.author.date = "2016-07-02T10:51:21Z"; json[0].commit.author.email = "mail@tomnomnom.com"; json[0].commit.author.name = "Tom Hudson"; gron can work backwards too, enabling you to turn your filtered data back into JSON: ▶ gron "https://api.github.com/repos/tomnomnom/gron/commits?per_page=1" | fgrep "commit.author" | gron --ungron [ { "commit": { "author": { "date": "2016-07-02T10:51:21Z", "email": "mail@tomnomnom.com", "name": "Tom Hudson" } } } ] Disclaimer: the GitHub API has fantastic documentation, but it makes for a good example. Installation gron has no runtime dependencies. You can just download a binary for Linux, Mac, Windows or FreeBSD and run it. Put the binary in your $PATH (e.g. in /usr/local/bin) to make it easy to use: ▶ tar xzf gron-linux-amd64-0.1.5.tgz ▶ sudo mv gron /usr/local/bin/ If you're a Mac user you can also install gron via brew: ▶ brew install gron Or if you're a Go user you can use go install: ▶ go install github.com/tomnomnom/gron@latest It's recommended that you alias ungron or norg (or both!) to gron --ungron. Put something like this in your shell profile (e.g. in ~/.bashrc): alias norg="gron --ungron" alias ungron="gron --ungron" Or you could create a shell script in your $PATH named ungron or norg to affect all users: gron --ungron "$@" Usage Get JSON from a file: ▶ gron testdata/two.json json = {}; json.contact = {}; json.contact.email = "mail@tomnomnom.com"; json.contact.twitter = "@TomNomNom"; json.github = "https://github.com/tomnomnom/"; json.likes = []; json.likes[0] = "code"; json.likes[1] = "cheese"; json.likes[2] = "meat"; json.name = "Tom"; From a URL: ▶ gron http://headers.jsontest.com/ json = {}; json.Host = "headers.jsontest.com"; json["User-Agent"] = "gron/0.1"; json["X-Cloud-Trace-Context"] = "6917a823919477919dbc1523584ba25d/11970839830843610056"; Or from stdin: ▶ curl -s http://headers.jsontest.com/ | gron json = {}; json.Accept = "*/*"; json.Host = "headers.jsontest.com"; json["User-Agent"] = "curl/7.43.0"; json["X-Cloud-Trace-Context"] = "c70f7bf26661c67d0b9f2cde6f295319/13941186890243645147"; Grep for something and easily see the path to it: ▶ gron testdata/two.json | grep twitter json.contact.twitter = "@TomNomNom"; gron makes diffing JSON easy too: ▶ diff <(gron two.json) <(gron two-b.json) 3c3 < json.contact.email = "mail@tomnomnom.com"; --- > json.contact.email = "contact@tomnomnom.com"; The output of gron is valid JavaScript: ▶ gron testdata/two.json > tmp.js ▶ echo "console.log(json);" >> tmp.js ▶ nodejs tmp.js { contact: { email: 'mail@tomnomnom.com', twitter: '@TomNomNom' }, github: 'https://github.com/tomnomnom/', likes: [ 'code', 'cheese', 'meat' ], name: 'Tom' } It's also possible to obtain the gron output as JSON stream via the --json switch: ▶ curl -s http://headers.jsontest.com/ | gron --json [[],{}] [["Accept"],"*/*"] [["Host"],"headers.jsontest.com"] [["User-Agent"],"curl/7.43.0"] [["X-Cloud-Trace-Context"],"c70f7bf26661c67d0b9f2cde6f295319/13941186890243645147"] ungronning gron can also turn its output back into JSON: ▶ gron testdata/two.json | gron -u { "contact": { "email": "mail@tomnomnom.com", "twitter": "@TomNomNom" }, "github": "https://github.com/tomnomnom/", "likes": [ "code", "cheese", "meat" ], "name": "Tom" } This means you use can use gron with grep and other tools to modify JSON: ▶ gron testdata/two.json | grep likes | gron --ungron { "likes": [ "code", "cheese", "meat" ] } or ▶ gron --json testdata/two.json | grep likes | gron --json --ungron { "likes": [ "code", "cheese", "meat" ] } To preserve array keys, arrays are padded with null when values are missing: ▶ gron testdata/two.json | grep likes | grep -v cheese json.likes = []; json.likes[0] = "code"; json.likes[2] = "meat"; ▶ gron testdata/two.json | grep likes | grep -v cheese | gron --ungron { "likes": [ "code", null, "meat" ] } If you get creative you can do some pretty neat tricks with gron, and then ungron the output back into JSON. Get Help ▶ gron --help Transform JSON (from a file, URL, or stdin) into discrete assignments to make it greppable Usage: gron [OPTIONS] [FILE|URL|-] Options: -u, --ungron Reverse the operation (turn assignments back into JSON) -v, --values Print just the values of provided assignments -c, --colorize Colorize output (default on tty) -m, --monochrome Monochrome (don't colorize output) -s, --stream Treat each line of input as a separate JSON object -k, --insecure Disable certificate validation -j, --json Represent gron data as JSON stream --no-sort Don't sort output (faster) --version Print version information Exit Codes: 0 OK 1 Failed to open file 2 Failed to read input 3 Failed to form statements 4 Failed to fetch URL 5 Failed to parse statements 6 Failed to encode JSON Examples: gron /tmp/apiresponse.json gron http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/1 curl -s http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/1 | gron gron http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/1 | grep company | gron --ungron FAQ Wasn't this written in PHP before? Yes it was! The original version is preserved here for posterity. Why the change to Go? Mostly to remove PHP as a dependency. There's a lot of people who work with JSON who don't have PHP installed. Why shouldn't I just use jq? jq is awesome, and a lot more powerful than gron, but with that power comes complexity. gron aims to make it easier to use the tools you already know, li