Often the power is in the combinations of tools.
Read until the epilogue…
Prologue
In this case, I needed to be able to query the JSON results of calls to REST services from the command-line so I could process them in Batch files.
Since I could not find anything readily available, I originally Originally I opted for the PowerShell command-line scripting tool, as that ships with recent Windows versions and can re-use anything that .NET brings. But though [Wayback/Archive] .NET has built in JSON serialization support, there is [Wayback/Archive] no querying support in it.
Then I thought about Delphi, as it [Wayback/Archive] too has a built-in JSON parser, but even the well known [Wayback/Archive] JSON SuperObject library has no query support.
Back to .NET, which – like Delphi – has a well known and respected third party JSON library as well: [Wayback/Archive] NewtonSoft JSON aka JSON.net and that one [Wayback/Archive] does have support for querying JSON with the SelectToken function.
That’s the fundament of the rest of this article, with the potential to be used in a cross-platform as well.
So no need for a plan B.
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 