Install Dasel on Ubuntu 20.04

Dasel is a tool for selecting and modifying data which presented in different formats. Dasel supports JSON, TOML, YAML, XML and CSV data formats. This tool supports conversion between formats.

This tutorial shows how to install Dasel on Ubuntu 20.04.

Install Dasel

Download executable file from releases page of the Dasel repository.

sudo wget -qO /usr/local/bin/dasel https://github.com/TomWright/dasel/releases/latest/download/dasel_linux_amd64

Set execute permission for a file:

sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/dasel

We can check Dasel version:

dasel --version

Testing Dasel

Create test.json file for testing:

echo '{"status":"success","data":[{"name":"John","age":25},{"name":"James","age":29}]}' > test.json

Dasel use the same selector syntax no matter the data format. Each different part in selector is separated by a dot (.). For example, the following command selects all elements and prints nicely formatted JSON:

dasel -s '.' -f test.json

The output of the command:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "age": 25,
      "name": "John"
    },
    {
      "age": 29,
      "name": "James"
    }
  ],
  "status": "success"
}

We can select a particular field as follows:

dasel -s '.data.[1].name' -f test.json

Output:

"James"

Dasel can convert one data format to another. For example, the following command converts JSON to YAML:

dasel -f test.json -w yaml > test.yaml

Uninstall Dasel

If you want to completely remove Dasel, delete related file:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/dasel