With a deep enough JSON structure with similar enough items, the jq expressions are hard to make or maintain. This is a real world example: jq '.sourceSelectionTrees[].rootNode.children[].children' | jq '.[]? | .action.attributeMapping.attributeSources' | jq -r '.[]? | select(.type == "XYZ") | .dataRef.id'

jq is a json parsing tool, no?

A very powerful one. You could in theory stream multiple files into jq and have it output effectively arbitrary JSON based on their contents since it supports conditionals.

I don't think it would be very pretty since it's not designed for that use case, but the jq language is certainly powerful enough to allow it.

It can be used to generate JSON using functions, input data, conditional expressions and anything you want.