structured query language for JSON (in Python)

Question

I am working on a system to output a JSON file and I use Python to parse the data and display it in a UI (PySide). I now would like to add filtering to that system and I think instead of writing a query system, if there was one out there for JSON (in Python), that would save me a lot of development time. I found this thread:

Is there a query language for JSON?

but that's more for a Web-based system. Any ideas on a Python equivalent?

EDIT [for clarity]:

The format the data that I'll be generating is like this:

{
    "Operations": [
    {
        "OpID": "0", 
        "type": "callback", 
        "stringTag1": "foo1", 
        "stringTag2": "FooMsg", 
        "Children": [...],
        "value": "0.000694053"
   },
   {
        "OpID": "1", 
        "type": "callback", 
        "stringTag1": "moo1", 
        "string2": "MooMsg", 
        "Children": [...],
        "value": "0.000468427"
   }
}

Where 'Children' could be nested arrays of the same thing (other operations). The system will be built to allow users to add their own tags as well to the data. My hope was to have a querying system that would allow users to define their own 'filters' as well, hence the question about the querying language. If there was something that would let me do something like "SELECT * WHERE "type" == "callback" and get the requisite operations back, that would be great.

The suggestion of Pync is interesting, I'll give that a look.

Answer 1

I thought about this a little bit, and I lean towards something less specific such as a "JSON Query Language" and considered something more generic. I remembered from working with C# a bit that they had a somewhat generic querying system called LINQ for handling these sort of querying issues.

It looks as though Python has something similar called Pynq which supports basic querying such as:

filtered_collection = From(some_collection).where("item.property > 10").select_many()

It even appears to have some basic aggregation functions. While not being specific to JSON, I think it's a least a good starting point for querying.

Answer 2

I notice this question was asked a few years ago but if someone else find this, here are some newer projects trying to address this same problem:

• ObjectPath (for Python and Javascript): http://objectpath.org/
• jsonpath (Python reimplementation of the Javascript equivalent): https://pypi.org/project/jsonpath/
• yaql: https://yaql.readthedocs.io/en/latest/readme.html
• pyjq (Python bindings for jq https://stedolan.github.io/jq/): https://pypi.org/project/pyjq/
• JMESPath: https://github.com/jmespath/jmespath.py

I personally went with pyjq because I use jq all the time for data exploration but ObjectPath seems very attractive and not limited to json.