JSONPath or other XPath like utility for JSON/Javascript; or Jquery JSON

Question

I have been looking at JSONPath and though it seems pretty well done, I wonder if anyone has worked with it and can comment on its usability, or can recommend alternatives?

Answer 1

I just wrote a clientside JS-lib that does just this - it makes it possible to query a JSON structure with XPath.

@jlarson - with "defiant.js", you can query your JSON structure like this (this lib extends the global JSON object):

JSON.search( Characters, '//*[id="Banana"]' );

This call will return an array with matching nodes AND those matches won't be detached from your original JSON object (same behaviour as when working with XML + XPath). To illustrate what I mean, here is a little pseudo(-ish) code:

var store = {
    "book": [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "price": 8.95,
            "title": "Sayings of the Century",
            "category": "reference",
            "author": "Nigel Rees"
        },
        {
            "id": 2,
            "price": 22.99,
            "title": "The Lord of the Rings",
            "category": "fiction",
            "author": "J. R. R. Tolkien",
            "isbn": "0-395-19395-8"
         }
    ]
};

var b1 = JSON.search( store, '//book[1]' );
b1[0].isbn = '12345';

console.log( store.book[0].isbn );
// 12345

This lib is thus far for browser and clientside but I've plans to re-write it for NodeJS eventually. Check out the Xpath evaluator here; that demonstrates the functionality. There are also pre-written Xpath expressions as well:

http://defiantjs.com/#xpath_evaluator

You can find the lib at Github:
https://github.com/hbi99/defiant.js

Finally, there is a little more functionality in "defiant.js" and if you're interested, you'll hopefully read about it over there (http://defiant.com)

I hope you'll find it useful.