jq not working on tag name with dashes and numbers

Question

I am using jq but having "-" in my json tag make jq not compile. I cannot escape it to make it works. Here is the command:

curl -X GET -H "X-AppKey:foo" "foo/v2/_status" | jq '.component-status[]'

I have read in the github of jq this post https://github.com/stedolan/jq/issues/202 but I cannot make it work.

This is the output of the curl:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "hostname": "0b0b495a46db",
  "component-status": [
   {
     "status-code": 200,
     "component": "Service1",
     "status": "OK"
   },
   {
     "status-code": 200,
     "component": "Service2",
     "status": "OK"
   }
  ]
 }

Any idea?

rjurney · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-19 23:34:55Z

188

You need to enclose in brackets and double quotes:

jq '."component-status"'

With your given input it returns:

[
  {
    "status": "OK",
    "component": "Service1",
    "status-code": 200
  },
  {
    "status": "OK",
    "component": "Service2",
    "status-code": 200
  }
]

The jq Manual (development) --> Basic filters:

.foo, .foo.bar
The simplest useful filter is .foo. When given a JSON object (aka dictionary or hash) as input, it produces the value at the key “foo”, or null if there’s none present.

If the key contains special characters, you need to surround it with double quotes like this: ."foo$".

From the github issue Cannot select field if field name has dashes:

Currently, that gets parsed as a subtraction. You can always explicitly use strings for when your keys don't fit identifier syntax.

edited Jun 19, 2020 at 23:34

rjurney

5,2325 gold badges45 silver badges64 bronze badges

answered May 20, 2016 at 10:37

fedorqui

293k113 gold badges592 silver badges640 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

9 Comments

peak Over a year ago

Using the form .["quoted-name"] has the advantage of working in all versions of jq. In jq version 1.4 and up, the shorter form ."quoted-name" is also supported

fedorqui Over a year ago

@peak thanks for the insight! Do you have links for that, so I can add to the answer? My jq-fu is limited and all I did here was try a bit and find the explanation in a github issue from the jq project.

peak Over a year ago

The "development version" of the manual (stedolan.github.io/jq/manual) has links to other versions. The jq FAQ (github.com/stedolan/jq/wiki/FAQ) also discusses the issue. From the "development version": > If the key contains special characters, you need to surround it with double quotes like this: ."foo$".

BrianV Over a year ago

I've run into cases where the square brackets (.["hyphenated-string"]) actually causes an error: jq: error: syntax error, unexpected '[', expecting FORMAT or QQSTRING_START (Unix shell quoting issues?) at <top-level>. Whereas just adding double quotes (."hyphenated-string") worked fine.

Trenton Over a year ago

@BrianV You can repro with this: echo '{"a-a":{"b-b": "huzzah"}}'| jq '.["a-a"]."b-b"'. As typed, it works. But if you put a [ ] around "b-b" you get that error. '."a-a"."b-b"' also works.

|

Dim Dev · Accepted Answer · 2021-07-06 17:33:12Z

11

The option suggested by rjurney or the commenters to his answers did not work for me (probably because I used PowerShell), however in the answer from github issue there was a solution, which did the trick - escaping double quotation marks with \

jq '.\"component-status\"'

edited Jul 6, 2021 at 17:33

answered Jul 5, 2021 at 23:37

Dim Dev

1131 silver badge5 bronze badges

3 Comments

peak Over a year ago

@DivDev - Please be explicit about the computing environment you have in mind. This solution will not work in bash and bash-like shells.

Dim Dev Over a year ago

@peak, it was PowerShell, I added it to the answer

Vijay S B Over a year ago

It works on redhat 8 also

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

jq not working on tag name with dashes and numbers

2 Answers 2

9 Comments

3 Comments

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

9 Comments

3 Comments

Linked

Related