Is there a way to search nested data?

[piersoh]

I've found visidata gerat for looking at data files, but I've got some json files with nested data - I wondered if there was simple way to search all the data even if it's nested? My current alternative is just open the file in vim/less and search it that way.

[geekscrapy]

No way to really search embedded structures per-say, however:

If the json is contained within a single cell and not large you could make that column a string type and then search from there? So load the file, select the column you want then type-string. The. Use the search type you want, likely select-col-regex

Is it json or jsonl you have?

[piersoh]

Thanks for getting back to me.

I didn't quite understand when suggested using type-string - did you mean enter = and then do a type conversion to string but I couldn't get it to work?

It's a json dump from dynamoDB - the snag is that the nested data is small but hangs off a number of top level cells.

[saulpw]

@piersoh You can use ~ to type a column as a string. Or, you can expand nested columns with ( and you can then search all columns with g/.

[piersoh]

Ah thanks - they're both useful approaches and work well if I know which column I'm expecting to find the value. And if I'm not sure which column it is then I figured I can use g( and then using g/ which is handy! Might be worth adding it to help docs?

[saulpw]

I'm sure it's in there somewhere already. As always, the question is, where could this live (or be linked from) where you would have found it naturally?