jtbl

A simple cli tool to print JSON data as a table in the terminal.

jtbl accepts piped JSON data from stdin and outputs a text table representation to stdout. e.g:

$ cat cities.json | jtbl 
  LatD    LatM    LatS  NS      LonD    LonM    LonS  EW    City               State
------  ------  ------  ----  ------  ------  ------  ----  -----------------  -------
    41       5      59  N         80      39       0  W     Youngstown         OH
    42      52      48  N         97      23      23  W     Yankton            SD
    46      35      59  N        120      30      36  W     Yakima             WA
    42      16      12  N         71      48       0  W     Worcester          MA
    43      37      48  N         89      46      11  W     Wisconsin Dells    WI
    36       5      59  N         80      15       0  W     Winston-Salem      NC
    49      52      48  N         97       9       0  W     Winnipeg           MB

jtbl expects a JSON array of JSON objects or JSON Lines.

It can be useful to JSONify command line output with jc, filter through jq, and present in jtbl:

$ jc ifconfig | jq -c '.[] | {name, type, ipv4_addr, ipv4_mask}'| jtbl 
name     type            ipv4_addr       ipv4_mask
-------  --------------  --------------  -------------
docker0  Ethernet        172.17.0.1      255.255.0.0
ens33    Ethernet        192.168.71.146  255.255.255.0
lo       Local Loopback  127.0.0.1       255.0.0.0

Notice the -c flag used in jq to produce valid JSON Lines output for jtbl consumption.

Installation

pip3 install --upgrade jtbl

Usage

Just pipe JSON data to jtbl. (e.g. cat a JSON file, jc, jq, aws cli, kubectl, etc.)

$ <JSON Source> | jtbl

Compatible JSON Formats

jtbl works best with a shallow array of JSON objects. Each object should have a few elements that will be turned into table columns. Fortunately, this is how many APIs present their data.

JSON Array Example

[
  {
    "unit": "proc-sys-fs-binfmt_misc.automount",
    "load": "loaded",
    "active": "active",
    "sub": "waiting",
    "description": "Arbitrary Executable File Formats File System Automount Point"
  },
  {
    "unit": "sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:07.1-ata2-host2-target2:0:0-2:0:0:0-block-sr0.device",
    "load": "loaded",
    "active": "active",
    "sub": "plugged",
    "description": "VMware_Virtual_IDE_CDROM_Drive"
  },
  ...
]

jtbl can also work with JSON Lines format with similar features.

JSON Lines Example

{"name": "docker0", type": "Ethernet", "ipv4_addr": "172.17.0.1", "ipv4_mask": "255.255.0.0"}
{"name": "ens33", "type": "Ethernet", "ipv4_addr": "192.168.71.146", "ipv4_mask": "255.255.255.0"}
{"name": "lo", "type": "Local Loopback", "ipv4_addr": "127.0.0.1", "ipv4_mask": "255.0.0.0"}

Filtering the JSON Input

If there are too many elements, or the data in the elements are too large, the table may not fit in the terminal screen. In this case you can use a JSON filter like jq to send jtbl only the elements you are interested in:

The following example uses jq to filter and then again to 'slurp' the filtered elements into a proper JSON array.

jq Slurp Method

$ cat /etc/passwd | jc --passwd | jq '.[] | {username, shell}' | jq -s
[
  {
    "username": "root",
    "shell": "/bin/bash"
  },
  {
    "username": "bin",
    "shell": "/sbin/nologin"
  },
  {
    "username": "daemon",
    "shell": "/sbin/nologin"
  },
  ...
]

Or you can use the -c option in jq to send the data compact, which will effectively be JSON Lines format, which jtbl can understand:

jq JSON Lines Method

$ cat /etc/passwd | jc --passwd | jq -c '.[] | {username, shell}'
{"username":"root","shell":"/bin/bash"}
{"username":"bin","shell":"/sbin/nologin"}
{"username":"daemon","shell":"/sbin/nologin"}
...

When piping either of these to jtbl you get the following result:

username         shell
---------------  --------------
root             /bin/bash
bin              /sbin/nologin
daemon           /sbin/nologin
...

Working with Deeper JSON Structures

jtbl will happily dump deeply nested JSON structures into a table, but usually this is not what you are looking for.

$ jc dig www.cnn.com | jtbl 
   id  opcode    status    flags                query_num    answer_num    authority_num    additional_num  question           answer               query_time    server  when                 rcvd
-----  --------  --------  -----------------  -----------  ------------  ---------------  ----------------  -----------------  -----------------  ------------  --------  -----------------  ------
25618  QUERY     NOERROR   ['qr', 'rd', 'ra'            1             5                0                 1  {'name': 'www.cnn  [{'name': 'www.cn            34      2600  Fri Mar 06 07:25:     143
                           ]                                                                                .com.', 'class':   n.com.', 'class':                          23 PST 2020
                                                                                                            'IN', 'type': 'A'   'IN', 'type': 'C
                                                                                                            }                  NAME', 'ttl': 264
                                                                                                                               , 'data': 'turner
                                                                                                                               -tls.map.fastly.n
                                                                                                                               et.'}, {'name': '
                                                                                                                               turner-tls.map.fa
                                                                                                                               stly.net.', 'clas
                                                                                                                               s': 'IN', 'type':
                                                                                                                               ...

To get to the data you are interested in you can use a JSON filter like jq do dive deeper.

Diving Deeper into the JSON with jq

$ jc dig www.cnn.com | jq '.[].answer' 
[
  {
    "name": "www.cnn.com.",
    "class": "IN",
    "type": "CNAME",
    "ttl": 90,
    "data": "turner-tls.map.fastly.net."
  },
  {
    "name": "turner-tls.map.fastly.net.",
    "class": "IN",
    "type": "A",
    "ttl": 20,
    "data": "151.101.1.67"
  }
  ...
]

This will produce the following table in jtbl

name               class    type      ttl  data
-----------------  -------  ------  -----  -----------------
www.cnn.com.       IN       CNAME      72  turner-tls.map.fa
                                           stly.net.
turner-tls.map.fa  IN       A          17  151.101.1.67
stly.net.
turner-tls.map.fa  IN       A          17  151.101.193.67
stly.net.
turner-tls.map.fa  IN       A          17  151.101.65.67
stly.net.
turner-tls.map.fa  IN       A          17  151.101.129.67
stly.net.

Column Width

jtbl will attempt to shrink columns to a sane size if it detects the output is wider than the terminal width. It's not perfect and will be improved.