How to install JQ on Mac on the command line?

Question

You can install any application/packages with brew on mac. If you want to know the exact command just search your package on https://brewinstall.org and you will get the set of commands needed to install that package.

First open terminal and install brew

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Now Install jq

brew install jq

On a Mac, the "most efficient" way to install jq would probably be using homebrew, e.g.

brew install jq

If you want the development version, you could try:

brew install --HEAD jq

but this has various pre-requisites.

Detailed instructions are on the "Installation" page of the jq wiki: https://github.com/stedolan/jq/wiki/Installation

The same page also includes details regarding installation from source, and has notes on installing with MacPorts and 0install ("zero-install").

The simplest way to install jq and test that it works is through brew and then using the simplest filter that merely formats the JSON

Install

brew is the easiest way to manage packages on a mac:

brew install jq

Need brew? Run the following command:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Failing that: instructions to install and use are on https://brew.sh/

Test

The . filter takes its input and produces it unchanged as output. This is the identity operator. (quote the docs)

echo '{ "name":"John", "age":31, "city":"New York" }' | jq .

The result should appear like so in your terminal:

{
  "name": "John",
  "age": 31,
  "city": "New York"
}

To make sure homebrew is installed and install jq

git -C "/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-cask" fetch --unshallow 
brew update
brew install jq

For most it is a breeze, however like you I had a difficult time installing jq

The best resources I found are: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/download/ and http://macappstore.org/jq/

However neither worked for me. I run python 2 & 3, and use brew in addition to pip, as well as Jupyter. I was only successful after brew uninstall jq then updating brew and rebooting my system

What worked for me was removing all previous installs then pip install jq