Parsing JSON output to variable in bash using jq filters

Question

I have a query like this:

curl -s \
-X POST \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_TOKEN" \
--data "$(echo $PAYLOAD)" \
https://myapi/client/v4/graphql/ | jq .

... that produces output like this:

{
  "data": {
    "viewer": {
      "accounts": [
        {
          "magicTransitTunnelTrafficAdaptiveGroups": [
            {
              "avg": {
                "bitRateFiveMinutes": 23360
              },
              "dimensions": {
                "datetimeFiveMinutes": "2022-12-30T09:00:00Z",
                "tunnelName": "nw-blue"
              }
            },
            {
              "avg": {
                "bitRateFiveMinutes": 8960
              },
              "dimensions": {
                "datetimeFiveMinutes": "2022-12-30T09:00:00Z",
                "tunnelName": "mtlab_gcp1"
              }
            },
            {
              "avg": {
                "bitRateFiveMinutes": 95493
              },
              "dimensions": {
                "datetimeFiveMinutes": "2022-12-30T09:00:00Z",
                "tunnelName": "Cherry_CBE_1"
              }
            },
            {
              "avg": {
                "bitRateFiveMinutes": 2968507
              },
              "dimensions": {
                "datetimeFiveMinutes": "2022-12-30T09:00:00Z",
                "tunnelName": "Cherry_VCB"
              }
            },
            {
              "avg": {
                "bitRateFiveMinutes": 10880
              },
              "dimensions": {
                "datetimeFiveMinutes": "2022-12-30T09:00:00Z",
                "tunnelName": "accelia-poc1"
              }
            },
            {
              "avg": {
                "bitRateFiveMinutes": 21227
              },
              "dimensions": {
                "datetimeFiveMinutes": "2022-12-30T09:00:00Z",
                "tunnelName": "mtlab_sr_pni"
              }
            },
            {
              "avg": {
                "bitRateFiveMinutes": 27627
              },
              "dimensions": {
                "datetimeFiveMinutes": "2022-12-30T09:00:00Z",
                "tunnelName": "mtlab-tme-gcp1"
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  },
  "errors": null
}

I want to parse all the bitRateFiveMinutes values, add them up, and stuff them into a variable for evaluation. How do I do this using the jq -r option? I looked at the examples on https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/, but I could not determine what to use. It looks like there is a built-in operator + that might do the addition for me as well.

Answer 1

Here I'm taking a bit of a shortcut to avoid having to write out the complete path to the wanted values. I put the values in an array and then I run it through add to sum it up:

curl -s ... |
jq '[ .data[][][][][].avg.bitRateFiveMinutes ] | add'

Given the example in your question, this would output 3156054. You don't need to use jq with its -r option here, as integers are not string encoded.

A more verbose jq command would possibly look like

curl -s ... |
jq '.data.viewer.accounts |
    map(.magicTransitTunnelTrafficAdaptiveGroups |
        map(.avg.bitRateFiveMinutes) | add) | add'

This first computes the sum over all entries of each magicTransitTunnelTrafficAdaptiveGroups array and then adds these partial sums together. In your example, there's only a single of these inner arrays.

Getting the result into a shell variable is then a matter of running the pipeline in a command substitution and assigning it to a variable:

avgsum=$(
    curl -s ... |
    jq '[ .data[][][][][].avg.bitRateFiveMinutes ] | add'
)

---

Also note that your --data "$(echo $PAYLOAD)" is better written as --data "$PAYLOAD", unless you need to have the shell perform splitting and filename globbing on the unquoted value of $PAYLOAD, and echo to do its special processing of \n, \t, and \\.