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Command Line Interface (CLI) Reference

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jsonette provides a high-performance, standalone Command Line Interface (CLI) built on top of the core Rust engine. It allows formatting, minifying, querying, and managing configuration settings directly in your terminal.

🚀 Installation

Once published, you can install the CLI directly:

Cargo (Rust)

cargo install jsonette

APT / PPA (Ubuntu / Debian)

We maintain an official PPA for Ubuntu users.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dev-ette/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install jsonette

Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

brew tap dev-ette/jsonette
brew install jsonette

Pacman (Arch Linux / AUR)

The package is available in the Arch User Repository as jsonette-bin.

yay -S jsonette-bin

DNF / COPR (Fedora / CentOS / RHEL)

We provide an official COPR repository for RPM-based systems.

sudo dnf copr enable dev-ette/jsonette
sudo dnf install jsonette

Winget (Windows)

winget install dev-ette.jsonette

Pre-compiled Binaries (GitHub Releases)

If you prefer not to use a package manager or cargo, you can download standalone binaries directly from our GitHub Releases page.

  1. Go to the Releases page.
  2. Download the binary that matches your operating system and architecture (e.g., jsonette-macos-arm64 for Apple Silicon, jsonette-linux-amd64 for Linux, or jsonette-windows-amd64.exe for Windows).
  3. Make the binary executable (on Unix systems) and move it to your PATH:
# Example for macOS Apple Silicon
chmod +x jsonette-macos-arm64
mv jsonette-macos-arm64 /usr/local/bin/jsonette

🛠️ Commands & Usage

1. Formatting & Minifying

Formats (pretty-prints) or minifies a JSON file or standard input.

# Format a JSON file (outputs to stdout)
jsonette format data.json

# Format standard input via pipeline
cat data.json | jsonette format

# Minify JSON (remove all whitespace)
jsonette format data.json --minify

# Output formatted JSON to a new file
jsonette format data.json --output formatted.json

# Format in-place (updates the file directly)
jsonette format data.json --in-place

Formatting Option Overrides

You can override your global configuration for a single command run using the following flags:

  • -o, --output <file>: Write output to a specific file instead of standard output.
  • -i, --in-place: Edit the input file in-place (mutually exclusive with --output).
  • -s, --sort-keys <true|false>: Sort object keys alphabetically.
  • -n, --indent <count>: Set the number of spaces/tabs for indentation.
  • --use-tabs <true|false>: Use tab characters instead of spaces.
  • --line-ending <lf|crlf>: Force a specific line ending style.
  • --folding-style <expanded|compact>: Customize folding behavior.

2. Querying JSON (JSONPath)

Evaluate RFC 9535 JSONPath expressions against a JSON document.

# Query a file
jsonette query "$.store.book[*].author" books.json

# Query standard input
cat books.json | jsonette query "$.store.book[*].author"

3. Exploring JSON Structure (explore)

For unfamiliar JSON structures, explore allows you to discover keys or array lengths without needing to know them in advance.

# View the keys at the root of a JSON file (defaults to '$')
jsonette explore data.json

# View keys of an object at a specific path
jsonette explore "$[0]" data.json

# Filter keys matching a regex and limit the output to 5 items
jsonette explore --regex "^meta_" -n 5 "$[0]" data.json

4. Converting JSON (convert)

Convert a JSON document into other serialization formats (YAML, TOML, XML).

# Convert a JSON file to YAML
jsonette convert -t yaml data.json

# Convert a JSON file to TOML
jsonette convert -t toml data.json

# Convert standard input to XML
cat data.json | jsonette convert -t xml

5. Generating Dummy Data (generate)

Generate structured dummy JSON data from a schema file.

# Generate dummy JSON based on schema
jsonette generate --schema schema.json

# Generate a 10MB dummy JSON object and write to a file
jsonette generate --schema schema.json --size 10MB -o large-dummy.json

6. Global Config Management

Manage your global settings file (~/.config/jsonette/settings.json or %LOCALAPPDATA%\jsonette\settings.json) directly from the command line.

# List all active settings in JSON format
jsonette config list

# Get a specific configuration key
jsonette config get format.sort_keys

# Set a configuration key (persists to disk)
jsonette config set format.sort_keys true
jsonette config set format.indent 4

7. Shell Autocompletion (completions)

Dynamically generates autocompletion scripts for various shells including bash, zsh, fish, powershell, and elvish.

# Generate zsh autocompletions (prints to stdout)
jsonette completions zsh

# Load completions immediately in your current zsh session
source <(jsonette completions zsh)

# Install completions permanently (macOS/Homebrew zsh setup)
jsonette completions zsh > $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh/site-functions/_jsonette

⚠️ Diagnostics & Error Output

When formatting or parsing invalid JSON, jsonette outputs detailed diagnostics to stderr with line/column coordinates and a compiler-style visual caret pointer:

Error in <stdin>:2:1: EOF while parsing an object at line 2 column 0
  |
  1 | {"a": 1
  |        ^
  • Exit code 0 is returned on success.
  • Exit code 1 is returned on parsing, evaluation, or syntax errors.