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https://github.com/TomConlin/json_to_paths

Distill a JSON document into a collection of paths both for 'jq' and 'xpath'
https://github.com/TomConlin/json_to_paths

jq json xpaths

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Distill a JSON document into a collection of paths both for 'jq' and 'xpath'

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README 

        

### JSON to `jq` paths  or XML xpath



#### Purpose

To get insight into the structure of arbitrary JSON files from the command line.

Provides building blocks for further processing both with 'jq' as well as other tools

intended to be used with XML xpath.



### Requirements



 - `jq` installed see https://github.com/stedolan/jq/

(Most likely installs with your package manager.)



 - the one liner jq scripts this ropo is for



#### Usage



Snagging a random (to me) test JSON file from a neat looking

[awk json parser project](https://github.com/step-/JSON.awk)



```

curl -sL https://github.com/step-/JSON.awk/raw/master/test-cases/20170131-issue-007-test.json > testdata.json

```

### Result from generating `jq` paths

```

 ./json2jqpath.jq testdata.json > testdata.jqpath

```

Note: making up the format suffix `.jqpath`



```

cat testdata.jqpath

.

.response

.response|.count

.response|.data

.response|.data|.[]

.response|.data|.[]|.person

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.address

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.age

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.balance

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.company

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.coords

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.coords|.lat

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.coords|.long

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.email

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.gender

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.guid

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.id

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.isActive

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.name

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.phone

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.picture

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.registered

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.tags

.response|.data|.[]|.person|.tags|.[]

.response|.pagecount



```

This is a succinct representation of every simple path available through the json structure.



Example:

To see what the distribution of most common `tags` in that file.



Noting that the path agrument to the next `jq`  call  

   **".response|.data|.[]|.person|.tags|.[]"**  

is cut-n-paste from the next to last line of output from

`json2jqpath.jq`  above.



```

jq ".response|.data|.[]|.person|.tags|.[]" testdata.json |

    sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head

     75 "est"

     64 "labore"

     63 "consectetur"

     58 "occaecat"

     57 "fugiat"

     57 "excepteur"

     56 "proident"

     56 "Lorem"

     56 "laborum"

     56 "incididunt"

```



Looks like they used [Lorem Ipsum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum) as filler.



Try for something more specific such as person's name and location.

```

jq ".response|.data|.[]|.person|.name,.coords" testdata.json | head

"Anastasia Goodwin"

{

  "lat": 71.050828,

  "long": 113.565478

}

"Peters Watson"

{

  "lat": 0.203464,

  "long": -71.896296

}



```



#### Result for genreating XML xpaths

```

./json2xpath.jq testdata.json| sort -u > testdata.xpath

cat testdata.xpath

./response

./response/count

./response/data

./response/data/person

./response/data/person/address

./response/data/person/age

./response/data/person/balance

./response/data/person/company

./response/data/person/coords

./response/data/person/coords/lat

./response/data/person/coords/long

./response/data/person/email

./response/data/person/gender

./response/dfromata/person/guid

./response/data/person/id

./response/data/person/isActive

./response/data/person/name

./response/data/person/phone

./response/data/person/picture

./response/data/person/registered

./response/data/person/tags

./response/pagecount

```



which is a good starting point for tools such as [xpath2dot.awk](https://github.com/TomConlin/xpath2dot)



```

./json2xpath.jq testdata.json |

    sort -u |

    xpath2dot.awk -v ORIENT="UD" |

    dot -T svg > testdata.svg



```



![testdata.svg](https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath/blob/master/testdata.svg)



--------



A note on the use of `sort -u` above



The script `json2xpath.jq` has the ability to sort and remove duplicates but they

are [commented out](https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath/blob/master/json2xpath.jq#L14).



They are disabled by default to allow more use cases

for example:



 - We may be extracting data in some other program & want to know the native order

 - We may be interested in counts of things of various types



If you know these are not your use case you can uncomment them in the script

and eliminate piping the output through  `sort -u`