Get JSON from git commands, such as git status

Question

If I run this command:

$ git status

I get:

On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
nothing to commit, working directory clean

This is pretty difficult to parse.

But what would be really nice is --json output, in another world, I'd love to see:

 $ git status --json

and get this:

   {
    "currentBranch": "master",
    "remoteTrackingBranch": "origin/master",
    "isUpToDateWithRemote": true,
    "workingDirectoryClean": true
   }

is there some tool in the NPM ecosystem that can parse Git output into JSON? What is the best way to parse the output from git status, etc?

For example, git log has an option git log --oneline but AFAICT, git status has no analogue to that — Alexander Mills
– Alexander Mills, Commented Jul 8, 2018 at 4:45

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

9

This is no JSON, but git status has a --porcelain option:

Give the output in an easy-to-parse format for scripts. This is similar to the short output, but will remain stable across Git versions and regardless of user configuration.

See porcelain format v1 and v2:

Version 2 format adds more detailed information about the state of the worktree and changed items. Version 2 also defines an extensible set of easy to parse optional headers.

Header lines start with "#" and are added in response to specific command line arguments. Parsers should ignore headers they don’t recognize.

vonc@voncvb C:\test
> git status --porcelain=v2 --branch
# branch.oid a4a9ae9616e5f1da136a3ff717e722d055ca9aa7
# branch.head master
# branch.upstream origin/master
1 .M N... 100644 100644 100644 67f7a2a439ffb9dd18dd65bb6fd296f8c16c55b3 67f7a2a439ffb9dd18dd65bb6fd296f8c16c55b3 test/file1.txt
1 .M N... 100644 100644 100644 d59cac0c8acf674ba3316944451dcbec3e6ec3d7 d59cac0c8acf674ba3316944451dcbec3e6ec3d7 test/file2.txt

See as an example robertgzr/porcelain, which parses git status --porcelain=v2 --branch and outputs nicely formatted strings for your shell.

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Jul 8, 2018 at 4:50

VonC

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7 Comments

VonC Over a year ago

Future JSON output could be implemented later: public-inbox.org/git/[email protected]/T

Alexander Mills Over a year ago

All unix tools would all benefit from --json. W/o --json, it's for humans, with --json it's for machines.

VonC Over a year ago

@AlexanderMills my point was: git status --porcelain is already for machine, not for human consumption. But yes, it is not JSON yet.

VonC Over a year ago

@AlexanderMills I agree, which is why I mention in the comments public-inbox.org/git/[email protected]/T: a --porcelain=v3 option with JSON output could be coming. But for now, you would have to parse the existing output, and generate a JSON yourself.

Lothar Over a year ago

Yeah once again the Unix world should be looking to windows where we have something like this for a decade now. But unix guys are too arrogance to admit their failures (looking at how they still fight against systemd)

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