go install github.com/bbbbbrie/grontojq@latest
That should put the grontojq executable in $GOBIN. If that's in $PATH, which grontojq should point you to it.
This is a Go tool that converts gron output into jq commands. I wrote this to solve a specific problem I had and as an excuse to write in Go again.
I typically use gron to help build the jq command I want to use for whatever I'm trying to do. While --ungron is nice, I don't want to have gron as a dependency in pipelines or other places where I'm making use of jq. I use gron to help build the jq commands. Once I have them, I use just jq for the actual parsing.
You can pipe the output of gron in to grontojq. Here's how I think grontojq is most useful:
First, you'll use gron cats.json to explore the JSON file you're interested in:
# gron cats.json
...
json.catDescriptions[10] = {};
json.catDescriptions[10].emoji = "😽";
json.catDescriptions[10].word = "Charming";
json.catDescriptions[11] = {};
json.catDescriptions[11].emoji = "😈";
json.catDescriptions[11].word = "Mischievous";
Next, you'll do something like gron cats.json | grep 11 | grep word to pick the exact line you're interested in:
# gron cats.json | grep 11 | grep word
json.catDescriptions[11].word = "Mischievous";
Then, you'll pass that output to grontojq:
# gron cats.json | grep 11 | grep word | grontojq
jq '.catDescriptions[11].word'
You can copy this from your terminal or use pbcopy or similar to copy it straight to your clipboard with something like gron cats.json | grep 11 | grep word | grontojq | pbcopy.
Finally, you'll take the output from grontojq and use it to parse the file more elegantly:
jq '.catDescriptions[11].word' cats.json
This makes it a tiny bit easier to go from gron output to jq filter -- especially if piping to something like grontojq is easy to add to your terminal muscle memory. I'd alias it to something like g2jq or similar to make that even easier.