Jless
Dev tools
json viewer
SHOW HN2022
344points
84comments
#110of 2,570 in 2022
Top 5%of 2022 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
22 positive, 16 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 5 critical, out of 43 comments about the project. Thread score +0.40.
Idea: 5 for, 3 againstDocs: 5 for, 0 againstDesign: 2 for, 0 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful, fast tool that fits terminal workflows
From 4 comments
Wow, thank you so much for sharing this. I'm a frequent jq-to-less piper and probably a more frequent mobile browsing opener of ESPN scoreboards/subsequent grumbler about ESPN's…
JonathanMerklin on HNLove it! It's nice that you can pipe to jless the same way you would pipe to less. Super useful for navigating through kube resources, eg: kubectl get pod mypod-0 -n namespace0…
mcmm on HNEvery now and then you just randomly look at HN, stumble upon a tool, read the home page and just 20% in you are gasping "OMG HOW DID I LIVE WITHOUT THIS!". Yep, `jless` is…
pdimitar on HNThis is awesome! A great add to our command line utilities!
jacky2wong on HN
Homepage GIF clearly explains the tool
From 3 comments
Glad I fought the reflex to jump straight into the comments with "So how is this different than jq" and instead actually clicked through to see the wonderful homepage that…
danso on HNSuper cool OP! Love the home page and the demo gif! Love this!
matthewhartmans on HNCan you pipe output from another command to jless and have it detect when it finds a JSON document? I often tail the logs of my servers and then need to inspect the JSON data…
xrd on HN
Objections
Binary size is large for a CLI tool
From 2 comments
I'm loving it, and certainly will be using it a lot. One thing, though - 2MB seems like a lot for program of this kind. In comparison, jq on my system has 30kB.
pferde on HNFWIW, when rebuilding jless with some of the cargo tweaks mentioned here, as well as in…
pferde on HN
Install failed via cargo on older Rust versions
From 2 comments
FWIW I was unable to install it on Mac using cargo which compiles it from Rust. Here is the error I got. ``` error[E0658]: or-patterns syntax is experimental -->…
asimjalis on HNSeems like your Rust version is a bit out of date. Nested or-patterns have been stabilised in Rust 1.53.0, which came out back in June.
FreeFull on HN
Requests
Homebrew and other package manager support
From 1 comment
Homebrew?
eurasiantiger on HN
Musl build
From 1 comment
Humble request: musl version Keeping a glibc chroot directory takes up a fair bit of space, leaving less space available for other stuff. Whenever I try compiling Rust programs…
1vuio0pswjnm7 on HN
YAML support
From 1 comment
I'd love to see YAML support. I can see this being useful on a daily basis for everyone who works with Kubernetes. It's so useful that I'm going to dedicate next episode of my…
nyellin on HN
Ctrl-u and Ctrl-d page keys
From 1 comment
This is great! I use the JSONVue Chrome extension at work to display JSON files, and I can see the similarities. If I could suggest one thing: ctrl-u and ctrl-d are pretty common…
thamer on HN
Questions
Can it detect JSON piped from other command output such as logs
From 1 comment
Can you pipe output from another command to jless and have it detect when it finds a JSON document? I often tail the logs of my servers and then need to inspect the JSON data…
xrd on HN
How does it differ from jq
From 2 comments
Glad I fought the reflex to jump straight into the comments with "So how is this different than jq" and instead actually clicked through to see the wonderful homepage that…
danso on HNVery nice! I also thought "how is this different than jq" - glad I clicked on the link - this will be very helpful in my toolset! Thanks!
veganjay on HN
Alternatives named
gron
From 2 comments
One tool I rely on when I need to understand the structure of JSON is gron. I haven’t tried jless yet, will definitely do, but if you’re looking for inspiration, the gron…
rmetzler on HNConsider adding "gron" to your toolset, for easy json processing in the command line. It is cruder than jq, but it has a nice aura of simplicity that jq lacks.
enriquto on HN
fx
From 1 comment
Also worth mentioning: https://github.com/antonmedv/fx
yoavm on HN
jsonfui
From 1 comment
Nice! I’ve been using jsonfui[1] which does something similar but will definitely give this a go [1] https://github.com/AdrianSchneider/jsonfui
ccakes on HN
ijq
From 1 comment
Another useful tool for working with JSON interactively is ijq: https://github.com/gpanders/ijq
tekronis on HN
lnav
From 1 comment
For this specific use case there are log view tools that allow you to navigate logs and can automatically format json, xml etc when inside a log line. For example lnav:…
PhilippGille on HN