fx/DOCS.md

Documentation

• Getting started
• Usage
  • Anonymous function
  • Binding
  • Dot
  • Map
  • Chaining
  • Updating
  • Edit-in-place
  • Using packages
• Using .fxrc
  • Query language
• Formatting
• Other examples
• Streaming mode
  • Filtering
• Interactive mode
  • Searching
  • Selecting text
• Memory Usage

Getting started

fx can work in two modes: cli and interactive. To start interactive mode pipe any JSON into fx:

$ curl ... | fx

Or you can pass a filename as the first parameter:

$ fx my.json

If any argument was passed, fx will apply it and prints to stdout.

Usage

Anonymous function

Use an anonymous function as reducer which gets JSON and processes it:

$ echo '{"foo": [{"bar": "value"}]}' | fx 'x => x.foo[0].bar'
value

Binding

If you don't pass anonymous function param => ..., code will be automatically transformed into anonymous function. And you can get access to JSON by this keyword:

$ echo '{"foo": [{"bar": "value"}]}' | fx 'this.foo[0].bar'
value

Dot

It is possible to omit this keyword:

$ echo '{"foo": [{"bar": "value"}]}' | fx .foo[0].bar
value

If a single dot is passed, the input JSON will be formatted but otherwise unaltered:

$ echo '{"foo": "bar"}' | fx .
{
  "foo": "bar"
}

Map

One of the frequent operations is mapping some function on an array. For example, to extract some values.

[
  {
    "author": {
      "name": "antonmedv"
    }
  },
  {...},
  ...
]

And we want to collect names of each object in the array. We can do this by mapping anonymous function:

$ cat ... | fx '.map(x => x.author.name)'

Or we can do the same by using jq-like syntax:

$ cat ... | fx .[].author.name
[
  "antonmedv",
  ...
]

Note what [] can be applied to map object values.

$ echo '{"foo": 1, "bar": 2}' | fx .[]
[1, 2]

Chaining

You can pass any number of anonymous functions for reducing JSON:

$ echo '{"foo": [{"bar": "value"}]}' | fx 'x => x.foo' 'this[0]' 'this.bar'
value

Updating

You can update existing JSON using the spread operator:

$ echo '{"count": 0}' | fx '{...this, count: 1}'
{
  "count": 1
}

Edit-in-place

fx provides a function save which will save everything in place and return saved object. This function can be only used with filename as first argument to fx command.

Usage:

fx data.json '{...this, count: this.count+1}' save .count

Using packages

Use any npm package by installing it globally:

$ npm install -g lodash
$ cat package.json | fx 'require("lodash").keys(this.dependencies)'

Using .fxrc

Create .fxrc file in $HOME directory, and require any packages or define global functions.

For example, access all lodash methods without _ prefix. Put in your .fxrc file:

Object.assign(global, require('lodash/fp'))

And now you will be able to call all lodash methods. For example, see who's been committing to react recently:

curl 'https://api.github.com/repos/facebook/react/commits?per_page=100' \
| fx 'groupBy("commit.author.name")' 'mapValues(size)' toPairs 'sortBy(1)' reverse 'take(10)' fromPairs

To be able require global modules make sure you have correct NODE_PATH env variable.

export NODE_PATH=`npm root -g`

Query language

If you want to use query language, for example jsonata you can use helper function like this:

global.jsonata = expr => require('jsonata')(expr).evaluate

And use it like this:

curl ... | fx 'jsonata("$sum(Order.Product.(Price * Quantity))")'

Instead you can create next alias in .bashrc file:

alias jsonata='FX_APPLY=jsonata fx'

And now all code arguments to jsonata will be passed through jsonata helper. And now you can use it like this:

curl ... | jsonata '$sum(Order.Product.(Price * Quantity))'

Formatting

If you need output other than JSON (for example arguments for xargs), do not return anything from the reducer. undefined value is printed into stderr by default.

echo '[]' | fx 'void 0'
undefined

echo '[1,2,3]' | fx 'this.forEach(x => console.log(+x))' 2>/dev/null | xargs echo
1 2 3

Other examples

Convert object to array:

$ cat package.json | fx 'Object.keys(this.dependencies)'

Or by two functions:

$ cat package.json | fx .dependencies Object.keys

By the way, fx has shortcut for Object.keys. Previous example can be rewritten as:

$ cat package.json | fx .dependencies ?

Streaming mode

fx supports line-delimited JSON and concatenated JSON streaming.

$ kubectl logs ... | fx .message

Note what is object lacks message field, undefined will be printed to stderr. This is useful to see if you are skipping some objects. But if you want to hide them, redirect stderr to /dev/null.

Filtering

Sometimes it is necessary to omit some messages in JSON stream, or select only specified log messages. For this purpose, fx has special helpers select/filter, pass function into it to select/filter JSON messages.

$ kubectl logs ... | fx 'select(x => x.status == 500)' .message

$ kubectl logs ... | fx 'filter(x => x.status < 499)' .message

If filter/select overridden in .fxrc you still able to access them with prefix: std.select(cb) or std.filter(cd)

Interactive mode

Click on fields to expand or collapse JSON tree, use mouse wheel to scroll view.

Next commands available in interactive mode:

Key	Command
q or Esc or Ctrl+c	Exit
up or k	Move cursor up
down or j	Move cursor down
left or h	Collapse
right or l	Expand
Shift+right or L	Expand all under cursor
e	Expand all
E	Collapse all
g	Scroll to top
G	Scroll to bottom
.	Edit filter
/	Search
n	Find next
p	Exit and print JSON to stdout
P	Exit and print fully expanded JSON to stdout

These commands are available when editing the filter:

Key	Command
Enter	Apply filter
Ctrl+u	Clear filter
Ctrl+w	Delete last part
up/down	Select autocomplete

Searching

Press / and type regexp pattern to search in current JSON. Search work with currently applied filter.

Examples of pattern and corresponding regexp:

Pattern	RegExp
/apple	/apple/ig
/apple/	/apple/
/apple/u	/apple/u
/\w+	/\w+/ig

Selecting text

You may found what you can't just select text in fx. This is due the fact that all mouse events redirected to stdin. To be able select again you need instruct your terminal not to do it. This can be done by holding special keys while selecting:

Key	Terminal
Option+Mouse	iTerm2, Hyper
Fn+Mouse	Terminal.app
Shift+Mouse	Linux

Note what you can press p/P to print everything to stdout and select if there.

Memory Usage

You may find that sometimes, on really big JSON files, fx prints an error message like this:

FATAL ERROR: JavaScript heap out of memory 

V8 limits memory usage to around 2 GB by default. You can increase the limit by putting this line in your .profile:

export NODE_OPTIONS='--max-old-space-size=8192'