Json queries with JMEPath and jq

Interactive tools

Jiq

Install jq Install Golang <1.7 If your environmental variable

echo $GOPATH
GOPATH=/home/ubuntu/.local/go

is set, so add

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/go"

to .bashrc or .profile files.

jmespath.terminal

Get a filtered list of instance name, type, virt type, instance id

At the beginning my simple convention for Json is [] is an array and {} is an object.

Get an JSON output of all instances in your AWS accounty

aws ec2 describe-instances --output json | jiq #pipe into jiq

#jiq's expressions line
Filter]> .Reservations[].Instances[] | {_name: .Tags[], _id: .InstanceId, _type: .InstanceType, _virtType: .Hypervisor }

.Reservations[].Instances[] returns all data that we need, therefore we pipe into new object { _key1: XXX, _key2: YYY }. Actually, the keys fields we define now, as: _name, _id, _id, _type.

Next, let's select only Tags we are interested in, from a list(object). Therefore, we pipe Tags via select function. Where the Tag name is Name and we want get .Value field.

{name: .Tags[] | select(.Key=="Name").Value

Full filter command:

[Filter]> .Reservations[].Instances[] | {name: .Tags[] | select(.Key=="Name").Value, id: .InstanceId, type: .InstanceType, virt_type: .Hypervisor }

{                              
  "_name": "box-2.prod1.example.com",
  "_id": "i-ecccc666",                                                          
  "_type": "c4.2xlarge",
  "_virt_type": "xen"   
}                            
{           
  "_name": "db-2.prod1.example.com",
  "_id": "i-0aaaaae989a68b6e6",                     
  "_type": "m4.large",                        
  "_virt_type": "xen"                          
}

Now, we want to display only records, that match our instance name using REGEX expression .*box.*

{_name: .Tags[] | select(.Key=="Name").Value | match(".*box.*")

[Filter]> .Reservations[].Instances[] | {_name: .Tags[] | select(.Key=="Name").Value | match(".*box.*") , _id: .InstanceId, _type: .InstanceType, _virt_type: .Hypervisor }

{                                                                                                                                                           
  "_name": {                                                                                                                                          
    "offset": 0,                                                                                                         
    "length": 25,                                                                                                                                  
    "string": "box-2.prod1.example.com",
    "captures": []       
  },                           
  "_id": "i-0c26072b64b6404dc",                            
  "_type": "m4.large",                                                          
  "_virt_type": "xen"   
}                      
{                            
  "_name": { 
    "offset": 0,                                         
    "length": 24,                                  
    "string": "db-2.prod1.example.com", 
    "captures": []                            
  },                         
  "_id": "i-0a6f8fe989a68b6e6",    
  "_type": "m4.large",                                           
  "_virt_type": "xen"                          
}

The output contains now extra info. Butm but we are only interested in string field

{_name: .Tags[] | select(.Key=="Name").Value | match(".*box.*").string

Let's sort out the output by _id field. Note, only arrays [] aka lists can be sorted using sort_by</function>. That's why we need to wrap our object {} into brackets [].

[Filter]> [.Reservations[].Instances[] | {_name: .Tags[] | select(.Key=="Name").Value | match(".*mft.*").string, _id: .InstanceId, _type: .InstanceType, _virt_type: .Hypervisor }] | sort_by(._id)

Awscli queries

$ aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --output table \
  --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[Tags[?Key==`Name`] | [0].Value,InstanceId,InstanceType]'

And we get a nicely formatted table:
-----------------------------------------------
|              DescribeInstances              |
+----------------+--------------+-------------+
|  xxxxxxxxxx    |  i-a0169xxx  |  r3.large   |
|  yyyyyyyyyy    |  i-11a46xxx  |  m3.large   |
|  zzzzzzzzzzzzzz|  i-07c4axxx  |  t2.medium  |
+----------------+--------------+-------------+