Simple way to get JSON variables in bash using PHP. Works on probably on all webservers (with php installed)

getJSON

#!/bin/bash 
#
# example usage :  xpath /tmp/test.json "foo->flop"
# example output:  XML Developer's Guide
#
# given that /tmp/test.json looks like:
# { "foo": { "flop": "bar" } }

phpcode_jsonget='
  $parts = str_replace( array("'"'"'","]"), "", $argv[2] );
  $parts = explode( "->", $parts );
  $data = file_get_contents($argv[1]);
  $data = str_replace("\n","", $data); // indented json breaks json_decode()
  $data = json_decode( $data );
  foreach(  $parts as $part )
    if( isset( $data->$part ) ) $data = $data->$part;
  echo ( is_string($data) ) ? $data : "";
'

# getJSON jsonfile query 
getJSON(){
  php -r "$phpcode_jsonget" "$1" "$2"
}