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I like the power of `jq` and the fact that LLMs are proficient at it, but I find it right out impossible to come up with the right `jq` incantations myself. Has anyone here been in a similar situation? Which tool / language did you end up exposing to your users?
``` $sum($myArrayExtractor($.context)) ```
where `$myArrayExtractor` is your custom code.
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Re: "how did it go"
We had a situation where we needed to generate EDI from json objects, which routinely required us to make small tweaks to data, combine data, loop over data, etc. JSONata provided a backend framework for data transformations that reduced the scope and complexity of the project drastically.
I think JSONata is an excellent fit for situations where companies need to do data transforms, for example when it's for the sake of integrations from 3rd-party sources; all the data is there, it just needs to be mapped. Instead of having potentially buggy code as integration, you can have a pseudo-declarative jsonata spec that describes the transform for each integration source, and then just keep a single unified "JSONata runner" as the integration handler.
It's nice because we can just put the JSONata expression into a db field, and so you can have arbitrary data transforms for different customers for different data structures coming or going, and they can be set up just by editing the expression via the site, without having to worry about sandboxing it (other than resource exhaustion for recursive loops). It really sped up the iteration process for configuring transforms.
It made my life a lot easier