jq - How do I print a parent value of an object when I am already deep into the object's children?

Question

Say I have the following JSON, stored in my variable jsonVariable.

{
    \"id\": 1,
    \"details\": {
        \"username\": \"jamesbrown\",
                


        

Answer 1

Rather than querying up to the value you're testing for, query up to the root object that contains the value you're querying on and the values you wish to select.

You need the object that contains both the id and the name.

$ jq --arg name 'James Brown' 'select(.details.name == $name).id' input.json