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
--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
--cbt	cbt (Google Bigtable) command parser	details
--cef	CEF string parser	details
--cef-s	CEF string streaming parser	details
--certbot	certbot command parser	details
--chage	chage --list command parser	details
--cksum	cksum and sum command parser	details
--clf	Common and Combined Log Format file parser	details
--clf-s	Common and Combined Log Format file streaming parser	details
--crontab	crontab command and file parser	details
--crontab-u	crontab file parser with user support	details
--csv	CSV file parser	details
--csv-s	CSV file streaming parser	details
--curl-head	curl --head command parser	details
--date	date command parser	details
--datetime-iso	ISO 8601 Datetime string parser	details
--debconf-show	debconf-show command parser	details
--df	df command parser	details
--dig	dig command parser	details
--dir	dir command parser	details
--dmidecode	dmidecode command parser	details
--dpkg-l	dpkg -l command parser	details
--du	du command parser	details
--efibootmgr	efibootmgr command parser	details
--email-address	Email Address string parser	details
--env	env command parser	details
--ethtool	ethtool command parser	details
--file	file command parser	details
--find	find command parser	details
--findmnt	findmnt command parser	details
--finger	finger command parser	details
--free	free command parser	details
--fstab	/etc/fstab file parser	details
--git-log	git log command parser	details
--git-log-s	git log command streaming parser	details
--git-ls-remote	git ls-remote command parser	details
--gpg	gpg --with-colons command parser	details
--group	/etc/group file parser	details
--gshadow	/etc/gshadow file parser	details
--hash	hash command parser	details
--hashsum	hashsum command parser (md5sum, shasum, etc.)	details
--hciconfig	hciconfig command parser	details
--history	history command parser