Re: Feature request: --format=json

From: demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 18, 2017, 11:16 UTC
Message-ID: <CANgJU+WbbF2yzg53D7NasN_nxqytOh=UoutmMPak77JhiJHx4A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAJgfmqXqfp3A+A74dfkKjQb_26ZNH9anY52-G2L5ipg=+6--2w@mail.gmail.com>

On 18 April 2017 at 10:44, Fred .Flintstone <eldmannen@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Well the easiest way to work with that would be JSON.
> So the best would be if Git could output the data I want in JSON format.
> Then it would be easy for me to work with data.
>
> With git rev-list and git-cat file, its not so easy to reliably parse
> that output.

Doesn't seem too hard to work with rev-list to me. As far as I can tell the following produces what you want. You need perl installed obviously, and the JSON::PP module is required, but should come bundled with recent perls.

git rev-list master --pretty=raw | perl -MJSON::PP=encode_json -ane'if(/^(\w+) (.*)/) { if ($1 eq "commit") { push @objs, $o if $o; $o={}; } $o->{$1} = $2; } else { $o->{text} .= $_; } END{ push @objs, $o if $o; for $o (@objs) { s/^ //mg, s/^\n// for $o->{text}; ($o->{message},$o->{long_message})= split /\n\n/, delete $o->{text}; } print JSON::PP->new->pretty->encode(\@objs);}'

You might consider an alternative approach than stating that working with JSON is "the easiest", especially to people who clearly are making do without it. :-)

A better argument might be that exposing data through a well defined and widely used and simple data format would trivially expand the range of projects that might interoperate with git or enhance the git ecosystem. For instance you could argue that having clean JSON output would make it easier to integrate into search engines and other indexing tools that already know how to speak JSON. Maybe a regular contributor on this list might agree with your arguments and make it happen.

Until then you can parse rev-list like the rest of us. :-)

cheers, Yves