jq - select objects with given key name

Question

I\'ve got an arbitrary structure with many levels, etc. I need to select all objects that contain a key named updateDate. How do I do that with jq? I came up with o

Answer 1

The accepted answer also produces null for every object that doesn't have the key.

What worked for me was:

jq '..|objects|.updateDate//empty'

The .updateDate//empty part means: if .updateDate is null (or false), skip it entirely.

This of course wouldn't work if you expect your key to have values of false or null. In that case, use this:

jq '..|objects|select(has("updateDate"))|.updateDate'

Answer 2

In 1.4 you can just:

jq '..|.updateDate?'

If you're stuck with 1.3 you can use a longer program like so:

jq 'recurse(if type == "array" or type = "object" then .[] else empty end) | if type == "object" then .updateDate else empty end'

Answer 3

Not tested: how about jq 'recurse(.[]?) | objects | has("updateDate")' ?