Datafu

Datafu is a Rust library for extracting data from config objects and other arbitrary object graphs, using a custom query language. As a query language, it takes on aspects of both XPath and jq, but differs significantly in scope. As a library, it attempts to keep things relatively straightforward.

Comparison with XPath

XPath is more-or-less standard. While it is primarily designed for XML, there are implementations of XPath that can work with JSON and other formats. It's also more or less type-aware and can do operations like numeric range checks without the use of user callbacks.

Unlike XPath, Datafu is not primarily designed for XML, but rather as a more general-purpose tool that can also be used for XML. It even supports cyclic graphs, such as those which can be found in Lua tables.

Comparison with jq

jq is first and foremost a CLI tool. It's also Turing-complete. If an undecidable schema isn't your thing, and the previous section of this README didn't convince you to use XPath, then Datafu should be your tool of choice.

License

Datafu - Rust library for extracting data from object graphs.
Copyright (C) 2021  Soni L.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.