JSONPath for PHP 8.5+

This is a JSONPath implementation for PHP that targets the de facto comparison suite/RFC semantics while keeping the API small, cached, and eval-free.

Highlights

PHP 8.5+ only, with enums/readonly tokens and no eval.
Works with arrays, objects, and ArrayAccess/traversables in any combination.
Unions cover slices/queries/wildcards/multi-key strings (quoted or unquoted); negative indexes and escaped bracket notation are supported.
Filters support path-to-path/root comparisons, regex, in/nin/!in, deep equality, RFC-style null existence/value handling, and literal-only short-circuiting (e.g., ?(true), ?(false), && false, || true).
Tokenized parsing with internal caching; lightweight manual runner to try bundled examples quickly.

Installation

Requires PHP 8.5 or newer.

composer require softcreatr/jsonpath:"^1.0"

Development

Useful commands:

composer exec phpunit
composer phpstan
composer cs

JSONPath Examples

JSONPath	Result
`$.store.books[*].author`	the authors of all books in the store
`$..author`	all authors
`$.store..price`	the price of everything in the store.
`$..books[2]`	the third book
`$..books[(@.length-1)]`	the last book in order.
`$..books[-1:]`	the last book in order.
`$..books[0,1]`	the first two books
`$..books[title,year]`	multiple keys in a union
`$..books[:2]`	the first two books
`$..books[::2]`	every second book starting from first one
`$..books[1:6:3]`	every third book starting from 1 till 6
`$..books[?(@.isbn)]`	filter all books with isbn number
`$..books[?(@.price<10)]`	filter all books cheaper than 10
`$..books.length`	the amount of books
`$..*`	all elements in the data (recursively extracted)

Expression syntax

Symbol	Description
`$`	The root object/element (not strictly necessary)
`@`	The current object/element
`.` or `[]`	Child operator
`..`	Recursive descent
`*`	Wildcard. All child elements regardless their index.
`[,]`	Array indices as a set
`[start:end:step]`	Array slice operator borrowed from ES4/Python.
`?()`	Filters a result set by a comparison expression (constant expressions like `?(true)`/`?(false)` are allowed; unsupported/empty filters evaluate to an empty result)
`()`	Uses the result of a comparison expression as the index

PHP Usage

Using arrays

<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$data = ['people' => [
    ['name' => 'Sascha'],
    ['name' => 'Bianca'],
    ['name' => 'Alexander'],
    ['name' => 'Maximilian'],
]];

print_r((new \Flow\JSONPath\JSONPath($data))->find('$.people.*.name')->getData());

/*
Array
(
    [0] => Sascha
    [1] => Bianca
    [2] => Alexander
    [3] => Maximilian
)
*/

Using objects

<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$data = json_decode('{"name":"Sascha Greuel","birthdate":"1987-12-16","city":"Gladbeck","country":"Germany"}', false);

print_r((new \Flow\JSONPath\JSONPath($data))->find('$')->getData()[0]);

/*
stdClass Object
(
    [name] => Sascha Greuel
    [birthdate] => 1987-12-16
    [city] => Gladbeck
    [country] => Germany
)
*/

Magic method access

The options flag JSONPath::ALLOW_MAGIC will instruct JSONPath when retrieving a value to first check if an object has a magic __get() method and will call this method if available. This feature is iffy and not very predictable as:

wildcard and recursive features will only look at public properties and can't smell which properties are magically accessible
there is no property_exists check for magic methods so an object with a magic __get() will always return true when checking if the property exists
any errors thrown or unpredictable behavior caused by fetching via __get() is your own problem to deal with

<?php

use Flow\JSONPath\JSONPath;

$myObject = (new Foo())->get('bar');
$jsonPath = new JSONPath($myObject, JSONPath::ALLOW_MAGIC);

Script expressions

Script execution is intentionally not supported:

It would require eval, which we avoid.
Behavior would diverge across languages and defeat having a portable expression syntax.

Supported filter/query patterns (200+ cases covered in the comparison suite):

[?(@._KEY_ _OPERATOR_ _VALUE_)]
  Operators: ==, =, !=, <>, !==, <, >, <=, >=, =~, in, nin, !in

Examples:
[?(@.title == "A string")]      // equality
[?(@.title = "A string")]       // SQL-style equals
[?(@.price < 10)]               // numeric comparisons
[?(@.title =~ /^a(nother)?/i)]  // regex
[?(@.title in ["A","B"])]       // membership
[?(@.title nin ["A"])]          // not in
[?(@.title !in ["A"])]          // alternate not in
[?(@.key == @.other)]           // path-to-path comparison
[?(@.key == $.rootValue)]       // root reference
[?(@)] or [?(@==@)]             // truthy/tautology
[?(@.length)]                   // existence checks
[?(@['weird-key']=="ok")]       // bracket-escaped keys and negative indexes

A full list of (un)supported filter/query patterns can be found in the JSONPath Comparison Cheatsheet.

Similar projects

FlowCommunications/JSONPath is the predecessor of this library by Stephen Frank

Other / Similar implementations can be found in the Wiki.

Changelog

A list of changes can be found in the CHANGELOG.md file.

License 🌳

MIT © 1-2.dev

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