When working with long jsons or sql queries I keep opening the text editor and using its json and sql formatters. This feels slow, specially for sharing the strings on the chat. To improve the speed of this I created a couple of commands which can I call from rofi. Alternatively, a keyboard shortcut can be created.

The idea is to select and copy a string (either json or sql query) and pressing a short combination of keys, the string in the clipboard will be formatted.

For these we need:

A clipboard manager program, such as xclip
A json formatter, such as jq
A sql formatter, such as sqlfmt

What the script should do:

Select latest entry in clipboard
Run string formatter
Put the output in the clipboard

Formatting json string

xclip -o | jq . | xclip -sel clip

Formatting sql query

xclip -sel clip <<< "$(xclip -o | sqlfmt - --single-process -q)"

The commands are slightly different. This was done in purpose since I wanted to test string substitution in bash. The command could be rewritten as:

xclp -o | sqlfmt - --single-process -q | xclip -sel clip

Testing

To test:

Copy the command into the terminal
Copy the input test data (ctrl + c)
Run the command in the terminal
Paste into a text editor (ctrl + v)

Json test data:

[  
    {"name":"John", "email":"John@mail.com"},  
    {"name":"Doe", "email":"Doe@mail.com"}  
]  

Json output:

[
  {
    "name": "John",
    "email": "John@mail.com"
  },
  {
    "name": "Doe",
    "email": "Doe@mail.com"
  }
]

Sql input data:

SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users;

Sql output data:

select first_name, last_name
from users
;