ex.json

{
"stuff": {
   "buried": {
      "deep": [
       {
        "goodstuff": "here",
        "name": "Bob Rudis",
        "secret_power": 5
       },
       {
        "goodstuff": "here",
        "name": "Amanda Dobbyn",
        "secret_power": 4, 
        "more_nested_stuff": { 
            "a": 1,
            "b": 2
          }
        }
      ],
      "alsodeep": 2342423234,
      "deeper": {
        "foo": [
          {
            "goodstuff": 5,
            "name": "barb"
          },
          {
            "goodstuff": "here",
            "name": "scott"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
}}

jq-query.R

blob <- jsonlite::fromJSON("ex.json", simplifyVector=FALSE)
jqr::jq(x, 'recurse(.[]?) | objects | select(has("goodstuff"))')

sparql.R

devtools::install_github("ropensci/rdflib")
library(rdflib)
## experimental functions for rdflib package
source(system.file("examples/as_rdf.R", package="rdflib"))

blob <- as_rdf(jsonlite::fromJSON(x, simplifyVector=FALSE), vocab = "x:")

q <- '
PREFIX x: <x:>
SELECT ?name, ?power ?b ?id
WHERE { 
  ?object x:goodstuff "here" .
  ?object x:name ?name .
  OPTIONAL { ?object x:secret_power      ?power } .
  OPTIONAL { ?object x:more_nested_stuff ?y .
             ?y      x:b                 ?b} .
  OPTIONAL {
             ?parent x:deep ?object .
             ?parent x:alsodeep ?id
  }
}'
rdf_query(blob, q)

sparql_output.md

# A tibble: 3 x 4
  name          power     b          id
  <chr>         <int> <int>       <dbl>
1 scott            NA    NA         NA 
2 Amanda Dobbyn     4     2 2342423234.
3 Bob Rudis         5    NA 2342423234.