JQ to filter JSON by value

jq to filter by value.md

JQ to filter JSON by value

Syntax: cat <filename> | jq -c '.[] | select( .<key> | contains("<value>"))'

Example: To get json record having _id equal 611

cat my.json | jq -c '.[] | select( ._id | contains(611))'

Remember: if JSON value has no double quotes (eg. for numeric) to do not supply in filter i.e. in contains(611)

if searching for exact value don't use contains as that is substring/array lookup )
use ==
i.e.

cat my.json | jq -c '.[] | select( ._id == 611 ) 

And if your input is not a large array, but rather individual lines of json then use

cat my.json | jq -c 'select( ._id == 611 ) 

Nice! Thanks.

This is helpful. Can we add two select statements and do a 'AND' or an 'OR' of those select statements?

I'm answering my own question. It is possible by piping one select statement into another for an AND operation. Not sure about the OR.

you're a life saver... thanks

I'm answering my own question. It is possible by piping one select statement into another for an AND operation. Not sure about the OR.

You can also use or and and within select.

cat my.json | jq -c '.[] | select( ._id == 611 or .author == "John Doe" )'

https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/#ConditionalsandComparisons

Thanks a lot for this and for the answers ❤️

Note: If you need the output to be an array, then you should use map:

cat my.json | jq -c 'map( select( ._id == 611 ) )'

Tangentially, as ever, you want to avoid the useless cat.

Instead of

cat file | jq ...

you want

jq ... file

@tripleee When using it in a script you are right, but when doing iterative testing on the command line, not having to to jump back through the file name every time is undeniably helpful.

@samrjack Another way to do the same without changing the order on the command line is to replace:

cat file | jq ...

with:

< file jq ...

You can put the < file anywhere on the command line, not just at the end

@jcallen — Very cool!

And as they say, "I learn something new everyday!" 🙂

If you're looking after - how to parse JSON and select date range
Look at here https://gist.github.com/gangsta/702e071fd048db2e39c7907f40d0cfd4

To get an array back and persist it to a file, I wrapped the whole expression in an array like this:

cat input.json | jq '[ .[] | select( .field | contains("something")) ]' > output.json