JMESPath (pronounced "jaymz path") allows you to declaratively specify how to extract elements from a JSON document.
For example, given this document:
{"foo": {"bar": "baz"}}
The jmespath expression foo.bar
will return "baz".
JMESPath also supports:
Referencing elements in a list. Given the data:
{"foo": {"bar": ["one", "two"]}}
The expression: foo.bar[0]
will return "one". You can also reference all the items in a list using the *
syntax:
{"foo": {"bar": [{"name": "one"}, {"name": "two"}]}}
The expression: foo.bar[*].name
will return ["one", "two"]. Negative indexing is also supported (-1 refers to the last element in the list). Given the data above, the expression foo.bar[-1].name
will return ["two"].
The *
can also be used for hash types:
{"foo": {"bar": {"name": "one"}, "baz": {"name": "two"}}}
The expression: foo.*.name
will return ["one", "two"].
NOTE: jmespath is being actively developed. There are a number of features it does not currently support that may be added in the future.
The grammar is specified using ABNF, as described in RFC4234
expression = sub-expression / index-expression / or-expression / identifier / "*"
expression =/ multi-select-list / multi-select-hash
sub-expression = expression "." expression
or-expression = expression "||" expression
index-expression = expression bracket-specifier / bracket-specifier
multi-select-list = "[" ( non-branched-expr *( "," non-branched-expr ) ) "]"
multi-select-hash = "{" ( keyval-expr *( "," keyval-expr ) ) "}"
keyval-expr = identifier ":" non-branched-expr
non-branched-expr = identifier /
non-branched-expr "." identifier /
non-branched-expr "[" number "]"
bracket-specifier = "[" (number / "*") "]"
number = [-]1*digit
digit = "1" / "2" / "3" / "4" / "5" / "6" / "7" / "8" / "9" / "0"
identifier = 1*char
identifier =/ quote 1*(unescaped-char / escaped-quote) quote
escaped-quote = escape quote
unescaped-char = %x30-10FFFF
escape = %x5C ; Back slash: \
quote = %x22 ; Double quote: '"'
char = %x30-39 / ; 0-9
%x41-5A / ; A-Z
%x5F / ; _
%x61-7A / ; a-z
%x7F-10FFFF
In addition to the unit tests for the jmespath modules, there is a tests/compliance
directory that contains .json files with test cases. This allows other implementations to verify they are producing the correct output. Each json file is grouped by feature.
The included python implementation has two convenience functions that operate on python data structures. You can use search
and give it the jmespath expression and the data:
>>> import jmespath
>>> path = jmespath.search('foo.bar', {'foo': {'bar': 'baz'}})
'baz'
Similar to the re
module, you can store the compiled expressions and reuse them to perform repeated searches:
>>> import jmespath
>>> path = jmespath.compile('foo.bar')
>>> path.search({'foo': {'bar': 'baz'}})
'baz'
>>> path.search({'foo': {'bar': 'other'}})
'other'
You can also use the jmespath.parser.Parser
class directly if you want more control.