find-and-copy-a-value-from-large-json-output.md

Find And Copy A Value From Large JSON Output

I've been using fx for years as a sidekick to jq when I want to explore a JSON document or JSON output that I'm not yet familiar with. A more recent version of fx added the ability to yank (copy) values and keys you find in the document.

For instance, I may be looking for some info about my AWS RDS instances, so I pipe that command to fx.

$ aws rds describe-db-instances --output json | fx

This takes a moment to process and then the fx viewer is populated with a large blob of JSON. I can then hit / to start a document search, type in something like Endpoint, and then look around for the specific key-value pair I'm interested in.

I can then hit y to indicate that I want to copy the element under my cursor. If it is a key-value pair I will then be prompted to pick whether I want the value (v), the key (k), or the JSON path to this value (p).