headline: Tutorial body: - text: | Twitter has a JSON API, so let's play with that. This URL gets us the last 5 tweets about JSON: - command: "curl 'http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=json&rpp=5&include_entities=true'" result: | {"completed_in":0.108,"max_id":247677287108067328,"max_id_str":"247677287108067328","next_page":"?page=2&max_id=247677287108067328&q=json&rpp=5&include_entities=1","page":1,"query":"json","refresh_url":"?since_id=247677287108067328&q=json&include_entities=1","results":[{"created_at":"Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:44:01 +0000","entities":{"hashtags":[],"urls":[{"url":"http:\/\/t.co\/XRvh1ZVw","expanded_url":"http:\/\/jase.im\/Ri7I0M","display_url":"jase.im\/Ri7I0M","indices":[112,132]}],"user_mentions":[{"screen_name":"imagemechanics","name":"Jason Cotterell","id":57271393,"id_str":"57271393","indices":[3,18]}]},"from_user":"_AaronNg","from_user_id":79771704,"from_user_id_str":"79771704","from_user_name":"NgChenChong","geo":null,"id":247677287108067328,"id_str":"247677287108067328","iso_language_code":"en","metadata":{"result_type":"recent"},"profile_image_url":"http:\/\/a0.twimg.com\/profile_images\/2523558403\/ek8mo4j4beq84iw28gjl_normal.jpeg","profile_image_url_https":"https:\/\/si0.twimg.com\/profile_images\/2523558403\/ek8mo4j4beq84iw28gjl_normal.jpeg","source":"<a href="http:\/\/twitter.com\/">web<\/a>","text":"RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp:\/\/t.co\/XRvh1ZVw","to_user":null,"to_user_id":0,"to_user_id_str":"0","to_user_name":null}, ... - text: | There's lots of info and no whitespace, so to make it a bit more legible we pipe it through jq, telling jq to just spit the input back at us using the expression `.`: - command: "curl 'http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=json&rpp=5&include_entities=true' | jq '.'" result: | { "since_id_str": "0", "since_id": 0, "results_per_page": 5, "completed_in": 0.108, "max_id": 247677287108067330, "max_id_str": "247677287108067328", "next_page": "?page=2&max_id=247677287108067328&q=json&rpp=5&include_entities=1", "page": 1, "query": "json", "refresh_url": "?since_id=247677287108067328&q=json&include_entities=1", "results": [ { "from_user_name": "NgChenChong", "from_user_id_str": "79771704", "from_user_id": 79771704, "from_user": "_AaronNg", "iso_language_code": "en", "text": "RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp://t.co/XRvh1ZVw", "to_user": null /* lots more fields... */ }, /* lots more results... */ ] } - text: | Let's pull out the first tweet: - command: "curl 'http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=json&rpp=5&include_entities=true' | jq '.results[0]'" result: | { "from_user_name": "NgChenChong", "from_user_id_str": "79771704", "from_user_id": 79771704, "from_user": "_AaronNg", "iso_language_code": "en", "text": "RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp://t.co/XRvh1ZVw", "to_user": null /* lots more fields... */ }, - text: | For the rest of the examples, I'll leave out the `curl` command - it's not going to change. There's still a lot of info we don't care about there, so we'll restrict it down to the most interesting fields. - command: "jq '.results[0] | {from_user, text}'" result: | { "text": "RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp://t.co/XRvh1ZVw", "from_user": "_AaronNg" } - text: | The `|` operator in jq feeds the output of one filter (`.results[0]` which gets the first element of the results array) into the input of another (`{from_user, text}` which builds an object of those two fields). Now let's get the rest of the tweets: - command: "jq '.results[] | {from_user, text}'" result: | { "text": "RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp://t.co/XRvh1ZVw", "from_user": "_AaronNg" } { "text": "RT @_kud: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> -- http://t.co/Lhp92IqD", "from_user": "blouerat" } { "text": "Dynamic Forms Mobile App by pmadiset: Few Forms details are hosted on our server in the form of JSON. This JSON ... http://t.co/7KALdWaX", "from_user": "cebu_iphone" } { "text": "iPhone 5 website insanity - Video compressing using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> http://t.co/28Jesbio (Oh #Apple, U So #Awesome...)", "from_user": "dieswaytoofast" } { "text": "RT @umutm: A very nice web-based JSON editor - http://t.co/M70snaIf", "from_user": "Leolik" } - text: | `.results[]` returns each element of the results array, one at a time, which are all fed into `{from_user, text}`. Data in jq is represented as streams of JSON values - every jq expression runs for each value in its input stream, and can produce any number of values to its output stream. Streams are serialised by just separating JSON values with whitespace. This is a `cat`-friendly format - you can just join two JSON streams together and get a valid JSON stream. If you want to get the output as a single array, you can tell jq to "collect" all of the answers by wrapping the filter in square brackets: - command: "jq '[.results[] | {from_user, text}]'" result: | [ { "text": "RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp://t.co/XRvh1ZVw", "from_user": "_AaronNg" }, { "text": "RT @_kud: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> -- http://t.co/Lhp92IqD", "from_user": "blouerat" }, { "text": "Dynamic Forms Mobile App by pmadiset: Few Forms details are hosted on our server in the form of JSON. This JSON ... http://t.co/7KALdWaX", "from_user": "cebu_iphone" }, { "text": "iPhone 5 website insanity - Video compressing using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> http://t.co/28Jesbio (Oh #Apple, U So #Awesome...)", "from_user": "dieswaytoofast" }, { "text": "RT @umutm: A very nice web-based JSON editor - http://t.co/M70snaIf", "from_user": "Leolik" } ] - text: | - - - Next, let's try getting the URLs out of those API results as well. In each tweet, the Twitter API includes a field called "entities" which looks like this: { "user_mentions": [], "urls": [{ "indices": [83, 103], "display_url": "bit.ly/StniqT", "expanded_url": "http://bit.ly/StniqT", "url": "http://t.co/28Jesbio" }], "hashtags": [ {"indices": [108, 114], "text": "Apple" }, {"indices": [121, 129], "text": "Awesome"} ] } We want to pull out all of the "url" fields inside that array of url objects, and make a simple list of strings to go along with the "from_user" and "text" fields we already have. - command: "jq '.results[] | {from_user, text, urls: [.entities.urls[].url]}'" result: | { "urls": [ "http://t.co/XRvh1ZVw" ], "text": "RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp://t.co/XRvh1ZVw", "from_user": "_AaronNg" } { "urls": [ "http://t.co/Lhp92IqD" ], "text": "RT @_kud: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> -- http://t.co/Lhp92IqD", "from_user": "blouerat" } { "urls": [ "http://t.co/7KALdWaX" ], "text": "Dynamic Forms Mobile App by pmadiset: Few Forms details are hosted on our server in the form of JSON. This JSON ... http://t.co/7KALdWaX", "from_user": "cebu_iphone" } { "urls": [ "http://t.co/28Jesbio" ], "text": "iPhone 5 website insanity - Video compressing using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> http://t.co/28Jesbio (Oh #Apple, U So #Awesome...)", "from_user": "dieswaytoofast" } { "urls": [ "http://t.co/M70snaIf" ], "text": "RT @umutm: A very nice web-based JSON editor - http://t.co/M70snaIf", "from_user": "Leolik" } - text: | Here we're making an object as before, but this time the urls field is being set to `[.entities.urls[].url]`, which collects all of the URLs defined in the entities object. - text: | - - - Here endeth the tutorial! There's lots more to play with, go read [the manual](../manual/) if you're interested, and [download jq](../download/) if you haven't already.