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content/blog/jq.md

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+---
+title: "Process JSON in the terminal with jq"
+date: 2024-10-05T15:59:10-07:00
+draft: false
+tags: []
+math: false
+medium_enabled: false
+---
+
+The `jq` command is great for quickly viewing and manipulating JSON data. By default, the output is formatted is a human-readable way, and they provide an easy way to "filter" or access elements within the JSON data.
+
+For example
+
+```bash
+echo "{\"firstName\": \"Brandon\", \"lastName\": \"Rozek\"}"  | jq
+```
+
+Outputs
+
+```json
+{
+  "firstName": "Brandon",
+  "lastName": "Rozek"
+}
+```
+
+To see what's in the field `firstName`
+
+```bash
+echo "{\"firstName\": \"Brandon\", \"lastName\": \"Rozek\"}"  | jq .firstName
+```
+
+Other than quickly viewing JSON objects in the terminal. I have two other use cases for it.
+
+**1: Sanitizing Strings**
+
+```bash
+echo $OUTPUT | jq -Rsa .
+```
+
+| Flag | Description                                                  |
+| ---- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
+| `-R` | Don´t parse the input as JSON. Instead, each line of text is passed to the filter as a string. |
+| `-s` | Pass the entire input to the filter as a single long string  |
+| `-a` | Produce  pure  ASCII  output  with every  non-ASCII  character replaced with the equivalent escape sequence. |
+
+**2: Stringifying JSON**
+
+```bash
+jq ".|tojson"
+```
+
+From the man pages
+
+> The `tojson` and `fromjson` builtins dump values as JSON texts or parse JSON texts into values, respectively. 
+