Check out the jc Python package documentation for developers

Try the jc web demo and REST API

jc is available as an Ansible filter plugin in the community.general collection. See this blog post for an example.

JC

JSON Convert

jc JSONifies the output of many CLI tools, file-types, and common strings for easier parsing in scripts. See the Parsers section for supported commands, file-types, and strings.

dig example.com | jc --dig

[{"id":38052,"opcode":"QUERY","status":"NOERROR","flags":["qr","rd","ra"],
"query_num":1,"answer_num":1,"authority_num":0,"additional_num":1,
"opt_pseudosection":{"edns":{"version":0,"flags":[],"udp":4096}},"question":
{"name":"example.com.","class":"IN","type":"A"},"answer":[{"name":
"example.com.","class":"IN","type":"A","ttl":39049,"data":"93.184.216.34"}],
"query_time":49,"server":"2600:1700:bab0:d40::1#53(2600:1700:bab0:d40::1)",
"when":"Fri Apr 16 16:09:00 PDT 2021","rcvd":56,"when_epoch":1618614540,
"when_epoch_utc":null}]

This allows further command-line processing of output with tools like jq or jello by piping commands:

$ dig example.com | jc --dig | jq -r '.[].answer[].data'
93.184.216.34

or using the alternative "magic" syntax:

$ jc dig example.com | jq -r '.[].answer[].data'
93.184.216.34

jc can also be used as a python library. In this case the returned value will be a python dictionary, a list of dictionaries, or even a lazy iterable of dictionaries instead of JSON:

>>> import subprocess
>>> import jc
>>>
>>> cmd_output = subprocess.check_output(['dig', 'example.com'], text=True)
>>> data = jc.parse('dig', cmd_output)
>>>
>>> data[0]['answer']
[{'name': 'example.com.', 'class': 'IN', 'type': 'A', 'ttl': 29658, 'data':
'93.184.216.34'}]

For jc Python package documentation, use help('jc'), help('jc.lib'), or see the online documentation.

Two representations of the data are available. The default representation uses a strict schema per parser and converts known numbers to int/float JSON values. Certain known values of None are converted to JSON null, known boolean values are converted, and, in some cases, additional semantic context fields are added.

To access the raw, pre-processed JSON, use the -r cli option or the raw=True function parameter in parse() when using jc as a python library.

Schemas for each parser can be found at the documentation link beside each Parser below.

Release notes can be found in the Releases section on Github.

Why Would Anyone Do This!?

For more information on the motivations for this project, please see my blog post on Bringing the Unix Philosophy to the 21st Century and my interview with Console.

See also:

• libxo on FreeBSD
• powershell
• blog: linux apps should have a json flag
• Hacker News discussion
• Reddit discussion

Use Cases:

• Bash scripting
• Ansible command output parsing
• Saltstack command output parsing
• Nornir command output parsing
• FortiSOAR command output parsing

Installation

There are several ways to get jc. You can install via pip, OS package repositories, or by downloading the correct binary for your architecture and running it anywhere on your filesystem.

Pip (macOS, linux, unix, Windows)

pip3 install jc

OS Package Repositories

OS	Command
Debian/Ubuntu linux	apt-get install jc
Fedora linux	dnf install jc
openSUSE linux	zypper install jc
Arch linux	pacman -S jc
NixOS linux	nix-env -iA nixpkgs.jc or nix-env -iA nixos.jc
Guix System linux	guix install jc
Gentoo Linux	emerge dev-python/jc
Photon linux	tdnf install jc
macOS	brew install jc
FreeBSD	portsnap fetch update && cd /usr/ports/textproc/py-jc && make install clean
Ansible filter plugin	ansible-galaxy collection install community.general
FortiSOAR connector	Install from FortiSOAR Connector Marketplace

For more OS Packages, see https://repology.org/project/jc/versions.

Binaries

For precompiled binaries, see Releases on Github.

Usage

jc accepts piped input from STDIN and outputs a JSON representation of the previous command's output to STDOUT.

COMMAND | jc [SLICE] [OPTIONS] PARSER
cat FILE | jc [SLICE] [OPTIONS] PARSER
echo STRING | jc [SLICE] [OPTIONS] PARSER

Alternatively, the "magic" syntax can be used by prepending jc to the command to be converted or in front of the absolute path for Proc files. Options can be passed to jc immediately before the command or Proc file path is given. (Note: command aliases and shell builtins are not supported)

jc [SLICE] [OPTIONS] COMMAND
jc [SLICE] [OPTIONS] /proc/<path-to-procfile>

The JSON output can be compact (default) or pretty formatted with the -p option.

Parsers

Argument	Command or Filetype	Documentation
--acpi	acpi command parser	details
--airport	airport -I command parser	details
--airport-s	airport -s command parser	details
--amixer	amixer command parser	details
--apt-cache-show	apt-cache show command parser	details
--apt-get-sqq	apt-get -sqq command parser	details
--arp	arp command parser	details
--asciitable	ASCII and Unicode table parser	details
--asciitable-m	multi-line ASCII and Unicode table parser	details
--blkid	blkid command parser	details
--bluetoothctl	bluetoothctl command parser	details