Dealing with JSON array/not-array, and selecting the last key from JSON data

[goose-ws]

I'm using yq to parse a response from YouTube's data API to retrieve an image for a channel.

For reference, here's an example of the data response I'm working with:

{
  "kind": "youtube#channelListResponse",
  "etag": "YyVLSZElWg6KtMt9F1EpHnxuOSY",
  "pageInfo": {
    "totalResults": 1,
    "resultsPerPage": 5
  },
  "items": [
    {
      "kind": "youtube#channel",
      "etag": "KT87bSs31ZNserxtiRcbIqVXkHo",
      "id": "UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
      "snippet": {
        "title": "MrBeast",
        "description": "SUBSCRIBE FOR A COOKIE!\n\nAccomplishments:\n- Raised $20,000,000 To Plant 20,000,000 Trees\n- Removed 30,000,000 pounds of trash from the ocean\n- Built wells in Africa\n- helped 1,000 blind people see\n- helped 1,000 deaf people hear\n- Given millions to charity\n- Started my own snack company Feastables\n- Donated over 100 cars lol\n- Gave away a private island (twice)\n- Gave away 1 million dollars in one video\n- Counted to 100k\n- Read the Dictionary\n- Read Bee Movie Script\n- Read Longest English Word\n- Watched Paint Dry\n- Ubering Across America\n- Watched It's Every Day Bro For 10 Hours\n- Ran a marathon in the world's largest shoes\n- Adopted every dog in a shelter\n- Bought $1,000,000 in lottery tickets\n- Sold houses for $1\n- I got buried alive\n- Recreated Squid Game in real life\n- Gave away a chocolate factory\n- Gave away private jet\n- Survived 50 hours in Antarctica\nYou get the point haha\n\n\n*Do not email me asking for money, I give away money because it makes me happy :)",
        "customUrl": "@mrbeast",
        "publishedAt": "2012-02-20T00:43:50Z",
        "thumbnails": {
          "default": {
            "url": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/fxGKYucJAVme-Yz4fsdCroCFCrANWqw0ql4GYuvx8Uq4l_euNJHgE-w9MTkLQA805vWCi-kE0g=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
            "width": 88,
            "height": 88
          },
          "medium": {
            "url": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/fxGKYucJAVme-Yz4fsdCroCFCrANWqw0ql4GYuvx8Uq4l_euNJHgE-w9MTkLQA805vWCi-kE0g=s240-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
            "width": 240,
            "height": 240
          },
          "high": {
            "url": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/fxGKYucJAVme-Yz4fsdCroCFCrANWqw0ql4GYuvx8Uq4l_euNJHgE-w9MTkLQA805vWCi-kE0g=s800-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj",
            "width": 800,
            "height": 800
          }
        },
        "defaultLanguage": "en",
        "localized": {
          "title": "MrBeast",
          "description": "SUBSCRIBE FOR A COOKIE!\n\nAccomplishments:\n- Raised $20,000,000 To Plant 20,000,000 Trees\n- Removed 30,000,000 pounds of trash from the ocean\n- Built wells in Africa\n- helped 1,000 blind people see\n- helped 1,000 deaf people hear\n- Given millions to charity\n- Started my own snack company Feastables\n- Donated over 100 cars lol\n- Gave away a private island (twice)\n- Gave away 1 million dollars in one video\n- Counted to 100k\n- Read the Dictionary\n- Read Bee Movie Script\n- Read Longest English Word\n- Watched Paint Dry\n- Ubering Across America\n- Watched It's Every Day Bro For 10 Hours\n- Ran a marathon in the world's largest shoes\n- Adopted every dog in a shelter\n- Bought $1,000,000 in lottery tickets\n- Sold houses for $1\n- I got buried alive\n- Recreated Squid Game in real life\n- Gave away a chocolate factory\n- Gave away private jet\n- Survived 50 hours in Antarctica\nYou get the point haha\n\n\n*Do not email me asking for money, I give away money because it makes me happy :)"
        },
        "country": "US"
      }
    }
  ]
}

I previously did this with jq using the command:

jq -M -r ".items | if type==\"array\" then .[] else . end | .snippet.thumbnails | to_entries | [last] | from_entries | keys[]"

However, due to yq's increased flexibility for various data source types, I'm looking to replace jq with yq in my script.

My two questions are:

1. How can I format my yq command to be prepared to deal with both arrays, and non-arrays? (The if type==\"array\" then .[] else . end from my jq command?)

2. When I make the API call, I can filter down to the thumbnails via yq -p json ".items[0].snippet.thumbnails", which returns:

default:
  url: https://yt3.ggpht.com/fxGKYucJAVme-Yz4fsdCroCFCrANWqw0ql4GYuvx8Uq4l_euNJHgE-w9MTkLQA805vWCi-kE0g=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj
  width: 88
  height: 88
medium:
  url: https://yt3.ggpht.com/fxGKYucJAVme-Yz4fsdCroCFCrANWqw0ql4GYuvx8Uq4l_euNJHgE-w9MTkLQA805vWCi-kE0g=s240-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj
  width: 240
  height: 240
high:
  url: https://yt3.ggpht.com/fxGKYucJAVme-Yz4fsdCroCFCrANWqw0ql4GYuvx8Uq4l_euNJHgE-w9MTkLQA805vWCi-kE0g=s800-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj
  width: 800
  height: 800

I can't rely on using the name 'high' being the element that I want, as it just depends on what resolutions are available. Instead, I can rely on the largest resolution being the last key. With jq, I used to_entries | [last] | from_entries | keys[] to get the name of the last key, and then grabbed the url field of that last key with a second jq call. How can I use yq to do the same?

Thanks for any help!

[ccoVeille]

this ?

yq '.items[].snippet.thumbnails | to_entries | sort_by(.value.height) | reverse | .0 | .value.url'

[ccoVeille]

I had almost the same issue with

• How to sort/reorder by the value of a map, not the key #2089

[mikefarah]

Nice! FWIW you can replace reverse | .0 with .[-1] - though this makes me thing I should also add last 👍🏼

[goose-ws]

That did the trick! Thank you!