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TIL #1: how to sort JSON with jq

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For discu.eu I manage at least twenty bots and each one has a separate Firefox container.

Firefox containers sorted by name

I created the containers overtime without a particular order. Now each time I need to open a new tab in a specific container it takes me some time to pinpoint the one I need (for example the one for Rust). So I needed to sort them by name to find them faster.

Firefox saves the list in the containers.json file under the profile directory, which can be found by opening about:support. So I opened the file with nvim and run

:%! jq '.identities |= sort_by(.name|ascii_upcase)'

Which does the following:

  1. : starts the command mode of nvim
  2. % selects the whole file
  3. ! replaces the selection with the output of the following shell command
  4. jq is an amazing cli JSON processor. The following string does the following:
    1. .identities selects the key from the main JSON object. identities is an array
    2. |= the selection is passed to the following filter and updated “in place”, everything else remains as is
    3. sort_by(.name|ascii_upcase) sorts an array of objects using the key name, but first converts name to uppercase to simulate case insensitive sorting

Here’s my containers.json:

{
  "version": 4,
  "lastUserContextId": 58,
  "identities": [
    {
      "userContextId": 48,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "gift",
      "color": "red",
      "name": "apl"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 14,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "food",
      "color": "pink",
      "name": "c&cpp"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 20,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "dollar",
      "color": "green",
      "name": "compsci"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 21,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "cart",
      "color": "yellow",
      "name": "devops"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 57,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "circle",
      "color": "purple",
      "name": "discueu"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 16,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "pet",
      "color": "toolbar",
      "name": "erlang&elixir"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 18,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "fingerprint",
      "color": "blue",
      "name": "golang"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 9,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "cart",
      "color": "yellow",
      "name": "Google"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 19,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "briefcase",
      "color": "turquoise",
      "name": "haskell"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 13,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "gift",
      "color": "red",
      "name": "hn"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 46,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "cart",
      "color": "yellow",
      "name": "java"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 42,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "fruit",
      "color": "purple",
      "name": "laarc"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 15,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "fruit",
      "color": "purple",
      "name": "lisp&scheme"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 44,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "fingerprint",
      "color": "blue",
      "name": "nim"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 47,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "vacation",
      "color": "orange",
      "name": "php"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 10,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "vacation",
      "color": "orange",
      "name": "programmingdiscu"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 7,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "briefcase",
      "color": "turquoise",
      "name": "PythonDiscussions"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 58,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "cart",
      "color": "red",
      "name": "quotes"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 30,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "gift",
      "color": "pink",
      "name": "routinecheck"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 17,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "tree",
      "color": "blue",
      "name": "ruby"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 6,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "fingerprint",
      "color": "blue",
      "name": "RustDiscussions"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 25,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "fence",
      "color": "purple",
      "name": "RWB"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 12,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "chill",
      "color": "toolbar",
      "name": "social media"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 56,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "fence",
      "color": "toolbar",
      "name": "tata"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 23,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "vacation",
      "color": "orange",
      "name": "unix"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 5,
      "public": false,
      "icon": "",
      "color": "",
      "name": "userContextIdInternal.thumbnail",
      "accessKey": ""
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 4294967295,
      "public": false,
      "icon": "",
      "color": "",
      "name": "userContextIdInternal.webextStorageLocal",
      "accessKey": ""
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 43,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "pet",
      "color": "toolbar",
      "name": "webdev"
    },
    {
      "userContextId": 45,
      "public": true,
      "icon": "briefcase",
      "color": "turquoise",
      "name": "zig"
    }
  ]
}

P.S. I just learned that the command mode can be opened with q:. This way vim motions can be used to edit the command.

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