jq · lesson 10 of 32 · Filtering & conditions

if / elif / else

if … then … elif … else … end picks one branch per input. Every condition and branch is itself a filter.

Example 1Label each member by age

Document

{
  "team": "Platform",
  "office": { "city": "Berlin", "floor": 3 },
  "members": [
    { "name": "Ada", "age": 36, "role": "lead", "active": true,
      "email": "[email protected]", "skills": ["rust", "sql"] },
    { "name": "Linus", "age": 28, "role": "dev", "active": true,
      "email": null, "skills": ["c", "shell"] },
    { "name": "Grace", "age": 45, "role": "dev", "active": false,
      "skills": ["cobol"] },
    { "name": "Alan", "age": 41, "role": "qa", "active": true,
      "email": "[email protected]", "skills": [] }
  ]
}

Query

.members[] | if .age >= 40 then "senior" elif .age >= 30 then "mid" else "junior" end

if .age >= 40 The first condition.
then "senior" Its result when it is true.
elif .age >= 30 Otherwise, try the next condition.
then "mid" Its result.
else "junior" The result when nothing above matched.
end Every if is closed with end.

Result

"mid"
"junior"
"senior"
"senior"

Try it in the playground

Good to know

if yields a value, so it can sit anywhere a filter can — inside map(…), select(…) or an object value.