JWalk, a command-line JSON inspector

Sometimes inspecting JSON files can be a huge pain, which is exactly why Nate Kohari is created JWalk, a tiny NPM package that makes JSON inspection incredibly simple. First we will need a file to work with, if you don’t have one, simply run this at the command line to get some of our tweets @thechangelog in JSON format.

> curl -G -d count=5 -d include_rts=1 http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/thechangelog.json > sample.json

You will need node.js and NPM installed to use JWalk, but the setup process is simple:

> npm -g install coffee-script
> npm -g install jwalk

After installing jwalk, start up an interactive session (using our sample JSON file):

> jwalk sample.json

The command set is limited, but it amounts to exactly what you need for inspection:

• cd: jump into a specific node
• ls: view the contents of the current node
• exit: leave the session

For example, if you want to see the text of the first tweet returned from our cURL:

> cd 0
> cd text
> ls