ZeroTool Workbench

jq Playground

Run jq filters against JSON in your browser with the official jq 1.7 engine. Pipe, select, map, group_by, sort, reduce — no install, no upload, no signup.

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Examples
Result

Engine: jq 1.7 (WASM, cached after first load)

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How to Use

  1. Paste or type your JSON into the JSON Input panel (a sample users dataset is preloaded).
  2. Type a jq filter in the jq Filter field, or click one of the Example pills.
  3. Results render with JSON syntax highlighting under Result.
  4. Click Copy to copy the formatted output to your clipboard.

jq Cheat Sheet

  • . — the identity filter, returns the input unchanged
  • .field — extract a property value
  • .field? — extract optionally (no error when field is missing)
  • .[] — iterate over array or object values
  • .[start:end] — array slice
  • f | g — pipe output of f into g
  • f, g — produce both f and g outputs
  • select(cond) — keep values where cond is true
  • map(f) — apply f to each element of an array
  • group_by(.k) — group an array by key
  • sort_by(.k) — sort an array by key
  • length, keys, values, type, has(k) — introspection
  • add, min, max, unique — aggregation
  • tonumber, tostring, ascii_downcase, split(”/”) — conversion
  • reduce, foreach, def — control flow and custom functions

Common Use Cases

jq is the standard tool for shell pipelines that touch JSON: API responses from curl, Kubernetes manifests, CI/CD logs, AWS CLI output, infrastructure-as-code state, and analytics exports. This playground is for prototyping a filter on a small sample before piping a giant file through the CLI — copy the filter out and use it verbatim with jq -r ’…’.

Typical recipes: .items | map({id, name}) to flatten API list responses, group_by(.tag) | map({tag: .[0].tag, count: length}) to bucket events, [.[] | .duration_ms] | add / length to average a numeric field.

FAQ

Is this the real jq or a JavaScript reimplementation?

This is the official jq 1.7 C source compiled to WebAssembly via jq-web. Filter output matches the jq command-line tool byte-for-byte. The engine downloads once (about 1MB compressed) and is cached by your browser for every subsequent visit.

What jq features are supported?

Full jq 1.7 syntax — pipes, select, map, group_by, sort_by, reduce, foreach, try/catch, custom function definitions (def), recursive descent (..), string operations, math, date functions, and every built-in. If a filter works in the jq CLI, it works here.

Are my JSON and filter expression sent to a server?

No. The jq engine runs entirely in your browser via WebAssembly. Your JSON and filter never leave the device. Open DevTools → Network and you will see only the one-time jq.wasm download — no request payloads.

What is the maximum JSON size?

About 50MB is the practical ceiling — beyond that, browser memory and parsing time become noticeable. For multi-gigabyte JSON streams use the jq command-line tool with --stream.

How is this different from JSONPath Tester?

JSONPath is a path query language for picking nodes by location. jq is a full transformation language with pipes, conditionals, math, and function definitions. Use JSONPath Tester for simple lookups; use jq for shaping, filtering, aggregating, and reformatting JSON.