Transform JSON files with JSONata

Actions used

debug:log
roadiehq:utils:fs:write
roadiehq:utils:jsonata:json:transform

You can check the available actions if you visit /create/actions.

Walkthrough

apiVersion: scaffolder.backstage.io/v1beta3
kind: Template
metadata:
  name: json-jsonata-transform
  title: JSONata transformation
  description: An example to showcase how to use the `roadiehq:utils:jsonata:json:transform` action to transform a JSON file
spec:
  owner: group:default/engineering
  type: service

  parameters:
    - title: Inputs
      properties:
        data:
          title: Data in JSON format
          type: string
        expression:
          title: Expression
          type: string
  steps:
    - id: log-message
      name: Log Message
      action: debug:log
      input:
        message: Template execution started

    - id: write
      name: Write
      action: roadiehq:utils:fs:write
      input:
        path: ./data.json
        content: ${{ parameters.data }}

    - id: transform
      name: transform
      action: roadiehq:utils:jsonata:json:transform
      input:
        path: ${{ steps['write'].output.path }}
        expression: ${{ parameters.expression }}

    - id: log
      name: Console.log
      action: debug:log
      input:
        message: |
          Result: `${{ steps['transform'].output.result }}`

Breakdown

Parameters

Here we use two parameters to get user input to create a sandbox to test out the power of this action.

The first parameter, data is used to get a JSON structured data to perform the JSONata transformations on.

The second parameter, expression is used to provide the JSONata expression that will be performed on the input that provided in the previous input field.

Steps

debug:log

Uses the debug:log action to output a log message to the backstage scaffolder UI. The message here is a general hard-coded message that indicates that the template execution has started

- id: log-message
  name: Log Message
  action: debug:log
  input:
    message: Template execution started

roadiehq:utils:fs:write

- id: write
  name: Write
  action: roadiehq:utils:fs:write
  input:
    path: ./data.json
    content: ${{ parameters.data }}

We write the user input data into a temporary file. We will call this file data.json for this example. We need to write it to the workspace becuase the following action roadiehq:utils:jsonata:json:transform performs the transform on an actual file.

roadiehq:utils:jsonata:json:transform

- id: transform
  name: transform
  action: roadiehq:utils:jsonata:json:transform
  input:
    path: ${{ steps['write'].output.path }}
    expression: ${{ parameters.expression }}

It has two required inputs path and expression in this example template path coming from the output of the previous step and expression is the user input. The input.path is going to be the file that contains the data that we perform the JSONata transformation on. The input.expression is going the be the JSONata expression we run on the data.

To demonstrate the result of this action let’s say we execute this template with the following user input:

input.path = ’{“Name” : “Foo Bar”}’
input.expression = “Name”

debug:log

- id: log
  name: Console.log
  action: debug:log
  input:
    message: |
      Result: `${{ steps['transform'].output.result }}`

This action will log the result of the previous step. The output of this step will look very similar to the following:

4 2023-08-07T01:08:59.852Z info: {
5  "message": "Result: `\"Foo Bar\"`\n"
6 }