Category: jpt

all about jpt, the JSON Power Tool (https://github.com/brunerd/jpt)

merging JSON objects with jpt 1.0

brunerd

A cool new feature for jpt 1.0 is the ability perform additional merging operations beyond JSON Merge Patch (RFC 7396). To start with let’s check out a JSON Merge Patch operation, using the mergepatch operation:

#key "a" is overwritten with the -v value, "b" is removed because null
% jpt -i0 -o mergepatch -v '{"a":"🟢","b":null}' <<< '{"a":"🔴","b":"🟡"}'                                                                           
{"a":"🟢"}

# use -u to encode all characters above 0x7E with \u escaping
% jpt -u -i0 -o mergepatch -v '{"a":"🟢","b":null}' <<< '{"a":"🔴","b":"🟡"}'                                                                           
{"a":"\ud83d\udfe2"}

Only one key survives, since the Merge Patch spec says that any key with a null value will delete that key in the input JSON. Now perhaps you might want null to survive, if so, use the merge operation:

jpt -i0 -o merge -v '{"a":"🟢","b":null}' <<< '{"a":"🔴","b":"🟡"}' 
{"a":"🟢","b":null}

Now for the more advanced modes. -o merge0 will only merge in keys that do not exist. Existing keys remain untouched. To order the keys alphabetically use -O (the letter O)

% jpt -O -o merge0 -v '{"common":"🟢","uniqToMergeData":"🟢"}' <<< '{"common":"🔴","uniqToSource":"🔴"}'
{
  "common": "🔴",
  "uniqToMergeData": "🟢",
  "uniqToSource": "🔴"
}

As you can see only the uniqToMergeData key comes through, the other two keys common and uniqToSource do not change. Useful if you are upgrading an object to a newer format and want to retain existing key values and only add the new keys with empty or default values.

merge1 let’s us do the inverse of merge0 and merge only the keys that exist in the target JSON. Keys that do not exist do not merge over.

% jpt -o merge1 -v '{"uniqToMergeData":"🟢","common":"🟢"}' <<< '{"uniqToSource":"🔴","common":"🔴"}'
{
  "uniqToSource": "🔴",
  "common": "🟢"
}

If you like pictures (I sure do) and are a visual learner you can think of merge0 and merge1 like the Exclude and Intersect Shape Areas in Photoshop.

I hope these new merge modes could be useful to you, if you have a Mac (or *nix with jsc installed) download jpt from my GitHub Releases page and give it a go!

jpt 1.0, the JSON power tool in 2022

brunerd

I’m happy to announce that jpt, the JSON power tool, has been updated to 1.0 and is available on my GitHub Releases page! It’s been over a year since the last release and I’ve been of working on, learning, and pondering what a really useful JSON tool could be and then working like heck to make it a reality.

jpt is a command line utility for formatting, querying, and modifying JSON. It can run on any version of macOS and most any Unix/Linux with jsc (JavaScriptCore) installed, otherwise it’s dependency free! For systems administrators and MacAdmins who need first class JSON tooling in their own shell scripts it can be embedded as a shell function in either bash or zsh. jpt was built to stand the test of time, needing only jsc and a shell, it will work on the newest macOS all the way back to OS X 10.4 Tiger!

There’s a year’s worth of bug fixes, improvements, and new features, let’s take a look at some of them.

Notable Features and Improvement

• jpt can now input and output multi-JSON documents like JSON Text Sequences (RFC 7464) plus other non-standard formats like NDJSON and JSON Lines and concatenated JSON. See: jpt 1.0 can deal with multiple JSON texts

• Truncated JSON can be de detected in concatenated/lines JSON and repaired by closing up open strings, arrays and objects. See: Helping truncated JSON data with jpt 1.0

• jpt can now fully rehabilitate JSON5 back to standard JSON. As I learned last year, there’s more mutant JSON than I realized! See: jpt 1.0 and JSON5 rehab

• jpt can query JSON using both JSON Pointer, IETF RFC 6901 and JSONPath, a nascent draft RFC with powerful recursive search and filtering features.

• jpt can manipulate JSON using JSONPatch, JSON Merge Patch, and some new merge modes not found anywhere else. See: merging JSON objects with jpt 1.0

• shell scripters and programmers may find it useful that jpt has extensive string and number encoding capabilities. From classic encodings like hex, octal, and binary to more recent ones like URL/”percent” encoding and Unicode code points. See: jpt 1.0 text encoding fun

• Need help finding visualizing JSON in new ways? jpt can output the structure of JSON in ways not seen, like JSONPath Object Literals which are simply the JSONPath, an equal sign, and the JSON value (e.g. $.ok="got it"). This simple and powerful declarative syntax can help find the exact path to a particular value and can also be used to quickly prototype a JSON object. See: jpt: see JSON differently

Try it out

There’s a lot to explore in jpt 1.0, download it from my GitHub with a macOS installer package in the Releases page. Check out my other jpt blog entries here at brunerd. As the IETF JSONPath standard takes shape I’ll be updating jpt to accomodate that standard. Until then, I hope this tool helps you in your JSON work, play, or research!


jpt is unphased by macOS’s malformed JSON

brunerd

A funny thing happened on the way to writing a new blog entry. Instead of finding an example JSON file that ships with macOS, I stumbled upon a slow creep of malformed JSON files that started in OS X El Capitan and continues into Big Sur. While I can’t do much about deviant JSON files in macOS, I can control how jpt handles them. So like any good Teachable Moment™ and life lesson, I’ve turned lemons into lemonade and out of challenge comes innovation: jpt v0.9.6 is now nonplussed by these uncouth JSON files, with their comments and trailing commas. Like water off ducks back, jpt keeps on keepin’ on, unphased.

Finding the Misfits

To find these misfits I wrote made a script jsonParsingReportCSV-macOS. This will attempt to parse the JSON it finds using the json_pp binary that ships from Apple, the results are output as CSV and you can then easily sort it to spot troublemakers.

I’ve uploaded a couple annotated version of those searches along with the kind of deviation they exhibit: Malformed-macOS-10.15.csv and Malformed-macOS-11.1.csv

What’s their damage, man?

The two most prevalent kinds of JSON malformation I found in macOS were: trailing commas and comments. Trailing commas meaning the last item in an array or object should not have a comma after it. While Javascript has always allowed trailing commas in array literals and later in object literals (ES5), then in function parameters (ES2017), JSON has never allowed trailing commas nor comments. Neither are in the JSON spec (RFC8259).

The biggest group of offenders were the USD generated JSONs within USDKit (a private framework) and Model I/O. USD is interesting because of it’s lineage and purpose: It’s Pixar’s open source software for combining multiple 3D elements within a common scene. Or as Pixar’s page put it: “Universal Scene Description (USD) is the first publicly available software that addresses the need to robustly and scalably interchange and augment arbitrary 3D scenes that may be composed from many elemental assets.” Keep an eye on this framework 🕶

JSON Lines (Don’t Do It)

An outlier in the mix is defaultConfig.json within CoreAnalytics.framework, it is what some call “JSON Lines” or “concatenated JSON”, where each line is its own a JSON value or object. While doing some research on JSON Lines I came upon an intriguing comment in this post by rurban:

“The delimiters don’t get in the way, they protect you from MITM and other attacks. It’s a security feature, not a bug.”

Reini Urban on JSON vs. “concatenated JSON”

Taking a look at Reini’s GitHub and the level of his work, I’m going to give his statement some credence. To that end, I really didn’t want to add another output mode nor change query behavior to accommodate JSON Lines. My current compromise is to simply to attempt conversion of a JSON Lines file into an array: tack on commas and ensconce in square brackets. It Just Works™ if every line is truly a self contained JSON object. If you want to be made aware of this, use the -c option so jpt it will “complain” on stderr and exit with code 1.

The Rabbit Hole of CoreAnalytics

Within the CoreAnalytics private framework is defaultConfig.json, it is a collection of 4019 objects currently that describe the events and actions Apple is interested in collecting usage information on. They want to know if you’re actually using all those new features in CarPlay, Reminders, Photos, eGPU App usage, etc… If you want to see all the key names try this: jpt $..addTransform.name /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreAnalytics.framework/Versions/A/Resources/defaultConfig.json 

Do you actually use this stuff? Apple wants to know if it’s worth their while…

A Comment on JSON Comments

Comments in JSON has inspired debate far and wide, this post by getify sums it up very nicely:

A JSON encoder MUST NOT output comments. A JSON decoder MAY accept and ignore comments.

Douglas Crockford in some old Yahoo group that even Wayback can’t find anymore

So that’s just what jpt does now, it will never encode comments but it will strip out any and all comments it recognizes automatically, no switches needed. Which style comments? All of them (or most of them):

Commentkindlineage
# commentlineshell, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, MySQL
// commentlineC(99), Javascript, Java, Swift
/* comment */blockC, Java, Javascript, Swift
; commentlineassembly language (ASM)
-- commentlineAda, Applescript, Haskell, Lua, SQL
<!-- comment -->blockXML
*** comment ***linemacOS’s ionodecache.json

If you need a test file you can use my worstJSONEver.json. A most horrible JSON file if there ever was one! jpt soldiers on, use -c to see what it does to clean the input (-i0 for no level indents). It shows the initial parse error and each attempt at recovery.

Fixing the Misfits

There is no fixing, there is only acceptance. Since most of these files are in SIP protected areas of macOS so it will take an act of God, a well filed bug report, for Apple to correct these in a future update. But they usually only act if there’s a demonstrable bug, in this case it’s more of an observation about the condition of the JSON files than a clear issue. If someone is really bothered, they could disable SIP and go in and fix them, however future macOS updates will likely revert these changes. Since I haven’t tried this, who knows, macOS may get ornery and trip OS integrity protections, rendering your system un-bootable, YMMV 🤷‍♂️. The real question is if they impact how macOS works and I’m guessing they don’t. The apps and frameworks which use these off-spec JSON file must be doing something to correct the issues before parsing. Rest assured though, if you attempt to parse one of these files with jpt there will be no issues, it Just Works™. However if you would like to know it did something, use -c to “complain” about comments, commas, JSON Lines, and hard wrapping. It will send those notices to stderr and exit with a status of 1.

jpt: malformed JSON? Bring it on.

So after all this I don’t have a good example page for jpt’s multitude of features and usage (yet) but what I do have is a JSON Power Tool with more “dummy-proof” features than it did before. I’ll take that as a win! Check out the latest release of jpt at my Github.

jpt (JSON Power Tool) is a non-compiled tool that can manipulate and query JSON in a variety of ways, it runs on macOS (10.4 – 11.0) PPC/Intel/Apple Silicon; Linux with jsc; Windows with Linux subsystem for Windows and jsc. It can be used standalone or embedded within your shell scripts. I hope you find it useful. Thanks for reading!

jpt + jamf uapi = backupJamf-scripts

brunerd

Jamf UAPI: JSON Only

I am a creature of habit, no doubt, however sometimes you must get out of your comfort zone. The Jamf Universal API (UAPI) is one such case, it is JSON only and not XM. Those tried and true xpath snippets will no longer work with JSON, in fact what tool do you use with JSON? macOS really doesn’t have a good built-in JSON tool and if your scripts are client side do you really want to have jq as a dependency? Good thing I wrote a JSON parser you can embed in your scripts this summer! In fact, when I finished writing my JSON power tool jpt, I needed to find some practical examples to demonstrate its utility. Looking at the UAPI it’s clear some parts are still a work-in-progress, however the endpoint for scripts is actually really good. It gives you everything in one go almost like a database query. That should made backing up scripts a breeze!

backupJamf-scripts. boom.

If you’ve used the Classic API from Jamf, it is a 1:1 ratio of scripts to API calls: 2 scripts? 2 API calls via curl. 200 scripts? 200 API calls via curl. The new Universal API reduces that down to 1 call to get everything (plus one call to get the token), it’s super fast and I love it. Check out backupJamf-scripts.command in my newly minted jamfTools repo on GitHub for a working demostration of both the Jamf UAPI and jpt’s in-script JSON handling. I hope you like it!

jpt + jamf uapi = scripts downloading scripts

jpt: jamf examples pt. 2

brunerd

Over in the MacAdmins’ #bash channel I saw a I question regarding how to get the Sharing states of Bluetooth devices from system_profiler. The most succinct answer was to awk out the values:

system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType 2> /dev/null | awk '/State: / {print $2}'
Disabled
Disabled
Disabled

If you are using this for a Jamf Extension Attribute, I suppose it’ll do if you never want to allow any of them to be Enabled, but what if Internet Sharing was OK but not File Sharing? How would you match your Smart Group to multiple lines of unlabeled values? How would you match the first two but not the last two… and what if there was another USB Bluetooth device, that would add extra rows. Hmmm…

The answer for me, outputting the service name and the state on the same line. Since there isn’t a consistent line count from State: going back the service name, using something like grep -B n to include n lines of preceding data isn’t going to work.

      Services:
          Bluetooth File Transfer:
              Folder other devices can browse: ~/Public
              When receiving items: Accept all without warning
              State: Disabled
          Bluetooth File Exchange:
              Folder for accepted items: ~/Downloads
              When other items are accepted: Save to location
              When receiving items: Accept all without warning
              State: Disabled
          Bluetooth Internet Sharing:
              State: Disabled

So you know what I say the answer to that is? That’s right, jpt the JSON Power Tool! It can parse the -json output from system_profiler in a more structured way and it allows for the discovery of as many applicable Bluetooth devices might be on the system.

Here’s a sample run with Internet Sharing turned On as well as Bluetooth Sharing turned On

file_browsing: disabled
object_push: enabled
internet_sharing: enabled

File Browsing is set to “Never Allow” but File Receiving is in the affirmative (Accept and Open, Accept and Save, or Ask). The addition of labels gives us the ability to create a Smart Group to match specific services like “file_browing: enabled” or any other combination thereof (perhaps internet_sharing should always be enabled, who am I to say what your requirements are!).

About the jpt

The JSON Power Tool (jpt) is a parser/manipulator for JSON documents written in Javascript and shell and can run standalone or embedded in your scripts bash or zsh and all the way back to OS X 10.4 Tiger! Check it out at: https://github.com/brunerd/jpt

jpt: jamf examples

brunerd

jpt has some practical applications for the Jamf admin

Sanitizing Jamf Reports

Let’s say you’ve exported an Advanced Search, it’s got some interesting data you’d like to share, however there is personal data in it. Rather than re-running the report, why not blank out or remove those fields?

Here’s a sample file: advancedcomputersearch-2-raw.json

This an excerpt from one of the computer record:

{
"name": "Deathquark",
"udid": "2ca8977b-05a1-4cf0-9e06-24c4aa8115bc",
"Managed": "Managed",
"id": 2,
"Computer_Name": "Deathquark",
"Last_Inventory_Update": "2020-11-04 22:01:09",
"Total_Number_of_Cores": "8",
"Username": "Professor Frink",
"FileVault_2_Status": "Encrypted",
"JSS_Computer_ID": "2",
"Number_of_Available_Updates": "1",
"Model_Identifier": "MacBookPro16,1",
"Operating_System": "Mac OS X 10.15.7",
"Model": "MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)",
"MAC_Address": "12:34:56:78:9A:BC",
"Serial_Number": "C02K2ND8CMF1",
"Email_Address": "frink@hoyvin-glavin.com",
"IP_Address": "10.0.1.42",
"FileVault_Status": "1/1",
"Processor_Type": "Intel Core i9",
"Processor_Speed_MHz": "2457",
"Total_RAM_MB": "65536"
}

Now let’s say the privacy standards for this place is GDPR on steroids and all personally identifiable information must be removed, including serials, IPs, UUIDs, almost everything (but you don’t want to run the report again because it took ages to get the output)!

Here’s what that command would look like: jpt -o replace -v '"REDACTED"' -p '$["advanced_computer_search"]["computers"][*]["name","udid","Username","Computer_Name","MAC_Address","Serial_Number","Email_Address","IP_Address"]' ./advancedcomputersearch-2-raw.json

Here’s what that same computer looks like in the resulting output (as well as all others in the document):

  {
    "name": "REDACTED",
    "udid": "REDACTED",
    "Managed": "Managed",
    "id": 2,
    "Computer_Name": "REDACTED",
    "Architecture_Type": "i386",
    "Make": "Apple",
    "Service_Pack": "",
    "Last_Inventory_Update": "2020-11-04 22:01:09",
    "Active_Directory_Status": "Not Bound",
    "Total_Number_of_Cores": "8",
    "Username": "REDACTED",
    "FileVault_2_Status": "Encrypted",
    "JSS_Computer_ID": "254",
    "Number_of_Available_Updates": "1",
    "Model_Identifier": "MacBookPro16,1",
    "Operating_System": "Mac OS X 10.15.7",
    "Model": "MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)",
    "MAC_Address": "REDACTED",
    "Serial_Number": "REDACTED",
    "Email_Address": "REDACTED",
    "IP_Address": "REDACTED",
    "FileVault_Status": "1/1",
    "Processor_Type": "Intel Core i9",
    "Processor_Speed_MHz": "2457",
    "Total_RAM_MB": "65536"
  }

What we did was use the -o replace operation with a -v <value> of the JSON string "REDACTED" to all the paths matched by the JSONPath union expression (the comma separated property names in brackets) of the -p option. JSON Pointer can only act on one value at a time, this is where JSONPath can save you time and really shines.

jpt is fast because WebKit’s JavascriptCore engine is fast, for instance there is a larger version of that search that has 15,999 computers, it took only 11 seconds to redact every record.

jpt -l $.advanced_computer_search.computers ./advancedcomputersearch.json
15999

time jpt -o replace -v '"REDACTED"' -p '$.advanced_computer_search.computers[*]["name","udid","Username","Computer_Name","MAC_Address","Serial_Number","Email_Address","IP_Address"]' ./advancedcomputersearch.json > /dev/null 

11.14s user 0.35s system 104% cpu 11.030 total

Put Smart Computer Groups on a diet

When you download Smart Groups via the API, you will also get an array of all the computers objects that match at that moment in time. If you just want to back up the logic or upload to another system, you don’t want all those computers in there.

Sample file: smartgroup-1-raw.json

{
  "computer_group": {
    "id": 12,
    "name": "All 10.15.x Macs",
    "is_smart": true,
    "site": {
      "id": -1,
      "name": "None"
    },
    "criteria": [
      {
        "name": "Operating System Version",
        "priority": 0,
        "and_or": "and",
        "search_type": "like",
        "value": "10.15",
        "opening_paren": false,
        "closing_paren": false
      }
    ],
    "computers": [
      {
        "id": 1,
        "name": "mac1",
        "mac_address": "12:34:56:78:9A:BC",
        "alt_mac_address": "12:34:56:78:9A:BD",
        "serial_number": "Z18D132XJTQD"
      },
      {
        "id": 2,
        "name": "mac2",
        "mac_address": "12:34:56:78:9A:BE",
        "alt_mac_address": "12:34:56:78:9A:BF",
        "serial_number": "Z39VM86X01MZ"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Lets’ remove those computers with jpt and the JSON Patch remove operartion:
jpt -o remove -p '$.computer_group.computers' ./smartgroup-1-raw.json

Since the target is a single property name, JSON Pointer can also be used:
jpt -o remove -p /computer_group/computers ./smartgroup-1-raw.json

{
  "computer_group": {
    "id": 12,
    "name": "All 10.15.x Macs",
    "is_smart": true,
    "site": {
      "id": -1,
      "name": "None"
    },
    "criteria": [
      {
        "name": "Operating System Version",
        "priority": 0,
        "and_or": "and",
        "search_type": "like",
        "value": "10.15",
        "opening_paren": false,
        "closing_paren": false
      }
    ]
  }
}

Further Uses

Using only JSON Patch replace and remove operations this JSON could have its id removed to prep it for an API POST on another JSS to create a new group or the name and value could be modified in a looping script to create multiple JSON files for every macOS version. The jpt is flexible enough to handle most anything you throw at it, whether you are using the standalone version or have embedded it in your scripts.

Stop by the jpt GitHub page to get your copy

secret origins: the jpt

brunerd

On building a JSON tool for macOS without using Python, perl, or Ruby.

In my work as a Macintosh engineer and administrator I’ve noticed macOS has lacked a bundled tool for working with JSON at the command line. Where XML has its xpath, if your shell script needs some JSON chops, it’ll require an external binary like jq or something else scripted in Python, Ruby or perl using their JSON modules. The problem is, those runtimes have been slated for removal from a future macOS. So I took that as challenge to devise a method to query and modify JSON data within shell scripts, that didn’t use one of those deprecated scripting runtimes and didn’t require an external binary dependency either. Could I achieve robust and native JSON parsing on a Mac by simply “living off the land”?

Why not just re-install the runtimes when Apple deprecates them?

“Why limit yourself like this? Just re-install the runtimes and move on”, you may ask. Well, I’d like to think that limitations can inspire creativity but we should also consider there may be some other reasons why Apple is discontinuing the inclusion of those runtimes. Some may say, “Apple Silicon + macOS 11.0 is the perfect time for them to clean house”, to which I’d have to agree that’s a very good reason and likely a factor. Others could say they are looking to tighten the screws to keep out unsigned code: maybe, they do like to glue things shut! But really, I think it’s more akin to the web-plugins of yore like Java and Flash. Apple does not want to be the conduit for deploying 3rd party party runtimes which increase the attack surface of macOS. This seems like the most reasonable of the explanations. So, if you accept that Apple is attempting to reduce attack surface, why increase it by re-installing Python, Ruby, or perl, just so a transient script (like a Jamf Extension Attribute) can parse a JSON file? My answer to that, is you don’t. You play the hand you’re dealt. Game on!

Looking for truffles (in a very small back yard)

Despite having another project (shui) that can output and invoke Applescript from within a shell scripts for generating user interfaces, I definitely knew that Applescript was not the way to go. Apple however, added to the languages Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) supports back in 2014 with OS X Yosemite (10.10), they added Javascript along with a bridge to the Cocoa Objective-C classes and they called it JXA: Javascript for Automation. This seemed like a promising place, so I started playing with osascript and figured out how to load files and read /dev/stdin using JXA, and while looking for an answer for garbled input from stdin I came upon a Japanese blog that mentioned jsc the JavaScriptCore binary which resides in the /System/Library/Frameworks/ JavaScriptCore.framework. Arigato! Pay dirt! 🤑 jsc does exactly what we need it to do: It can interpret Javascript passed as an argument, can access the filesystem and read from /dev/stdin, and best of all is in non-Private System level Framework that exists all the way back to OS X 10.4! Just the kind of foundation on which to build the tool.

Homesteading jsc

The existence of jsc goes back all the way to OS X Tiger and it’s functionality has evolved over the years. In order to have a consistent experience in jpt from macOS 10.4 – 11.x+ a few polyfills had to be employed for missing functions, along with a few other workarounds regarding file loading, printing and exit codes (or lack thereof). Once those were addressed the jsc proved to be a highly optimized Javascript environment that’s blazingly fast. It spans 13 macOS releases and is even present in many Linux distros out-of-the-box (Ubuntu and CentOS) and can even be run on Windows when the Linux Subsytem is installed.

With the host environment sorted, I began working with the original JSONPath code by Stefan Goessner as the query language. I didn’t know about JSON Pointer yet so this strange beast was all I knew! It worked out really. I went full throttle into developing the “swiss army knife” of JSON tools. I really leaned into the Second System Effect, as described in the Mythical Man-month, it’s when you put every doodad, gizmo and doo-hicky in your 2nd product (my first simple JSON pretty-printer built in JS on jsc). Eventually though, after I reached a feature plateau, I came back around to the address the quirks of the original JSONPath code. I ended up rewriting signifigant chunks of JSONPath and released it as it’s own project: brunerd JSONPath. But I digress, let’s get back to the JSON Power Tool.

jpt: powers and abilities

At it’s most basic, jpt will format or “pretty print” any JSON given. jpt can also handle data retrieval from JSON document using either JSONPath or JSON Pointer syntax. JSONPath, while not a standard, is a highly expressive query language akin to XPath for XML, with poweful features like recursive search, filter expressions, slices, and unions. JSON Pointer on the other hand is narrower in focus, succint and easily expressed, and standardized but it does not offer any of the interogative features that I feel make JSONPath so intriguing. Finally, jpt can also modify values in a JSON document using standardized JSON Patch operations like: add, remove, replace, copy, move, and test, as well as the also standardized JSON Merge Patch operation. Altogether, the jpt can format, retrieve and alter JSON documents using only a bit of outer shell script plus a lot more Javascript on any macOS since 10.4! 😅

Where can I get the jpt?

Stop by the project’s GitHub page at: https://github.com/brunerd/jpt

There you will find the full source and also a minified version of the jpt for inclusion within your shell scripts. Since it’s never compiled you can always peer inside and learn from it, customize it, modify it, or just tinker around with it (usually the best teacher).

Future Plans

There will undoubtedly be continued work on the jpt. Surely there are less than optimal routines, un-idiomatic idioms, edge cases not found, and features yet to be realized. But as far as the core functionality goes though, it’s fairly feature complete in my opinion. Considering that one of my top 10 StrengthsFinder qualities is “Maximizer”, the odds are pretty good, I’ll keep honing the jpt‘s utility, size (smaller), and sharing more articles with examples on the kinds of queries and data alteration operations the jpt can so perform. Stay tuned!

New Projects: jpt and shui, Now Available

brunerd

Between March and October 2020 I had some great ideas for command line Mac utilities the MacAdmin could apprecite and I had the time to devote to their realization. I’m excited to present these two open source projects, available on GitHub: jpt and shui. I hope they can add richness to your shell scripts’ presentation and capabilities without requiring additional external dependancies.

jpt – the “JSON Power Tool” is a Javascript and shell script polyglot that leverages jsc, the JavascriptCore binary that is standard on every Mac since 10.4 and since the jpt is purposefully written in ES5 to maintain maximum compatibility, why yes, this tool does run on both PPC and Intel Macs all the way back to OS X Tiger and then all the way forward to the latest 11.0 macOS Big Sur! Many Linux distros like CentOS and Ubuntu come with jsc pre-installed also, even Windows with the Linux Subsystem installed can run jsc and therefore can run the jpt!

What you can do with the jpt? Query JSON documents using either the simple yet expressive JSONPath syntax or the singular and precise JSON Pointer (RFC6901) syntax. The output mode is JSON but additional creative output modes can render JSONPaths, JSON Pointer paths, or even just the property names with their “constructor” types (try -KC with -J or -R) Textual output can be encoded in a variety of formats (hex/octal/URI encoding, Unicode code points, etc…), data can be modified using both JSON Patch (RFC6902) operations (add, replace, remove, copy, move, test) and also JSON Merge Patch (RFC7386) operations. JSON can be worked with in new ways, try -L for “JSONPath Object Literal” output to see what I mean. Or you simply feed jsc a file to pretty-print (stringify) to /dev/stdout. I’ll be writing more about this one for sure.
Github project page: jpt
Tagged blog posts: scripting/jpt

shui – first-class Applescript dialog boxes in your shell scripts without needing to remember esoteric Applescript phrasings! If you think it’s odd for code to have possessive nouns and are more comfortable in shell, you’re not alone. shui can be embedded in either bash or zsh scripts but it can also output Applescript if you really want to know how the sausage is made or want to embed in your script without shui. Hopefully shui will let you forget those awkward Applescript phrasing and focus on your shell script’s features and functionality. It uses osascript to execute the Applescript and launchctl to invoke osascript in the correct user context so user keyboard layouts are respected (vs. root runs). Check out the project page for demo videos and then give shui a try.
Project page: shui
Tagged blog posts: scripting/shui