jq Is the Most Underrated Command-Line Tool

JSON Processing Should Not Require Python jq processes JSON on the command line. Pipe any API response through it for instant formatting, filtering, and transformation. Basics # Pretty print curl -s https://api.github.com/users/torvalds | jq . # Get one field curl -s https://api.github.com/users/torvalds | jq .name # "Linus Torvalds" # Get nested field curl -s https://api.github.com/users/torvalds | jq .company Filter Arrays # Get names from array echo '[{"name":"a","age":20},{"name":"b","age":30}]' | jq '.[].name' # Filter echo '[{"name":"a","age":20},{"name":"b","age":30}]' | jq '.[] | select(.age > 25)' # Map echo '[1,2,3,4,5]' | jq '[.[] * 2]' # [2,4,6,8,10] API Examples # GitHub: get repo names and stars curl -s "https://api.github.com/users/torvalds/repos" | jq '.[] | {name, stars: .stargazers_count}' | head -20 # npm: get package version curl -s https://registry.npmjs.org/express | jq '.["dist-tags"].latest' # Count items curl -s "https://api.github.com/users/torvalds/repos" | j