A simple utility to parse JSON files.

spy.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import json, sys

lines=[]
for line in sys.stdin:
	stripped = line.strip()
	if not stripped: break
	lines.append(stripped)

content=''.join([str(x) for x in lines])
json_content=json.loads(content)
for arg in sys.argv[1:]:
	cont_aux=json_content
	tokens=arg.split(".")
	for i in range(len(tokens)):
		if i==len(tokens)-1:
			v=cont_aux[tokens[i]]
		else:
			cont_aux=cont_aux[tokens[i]]
	if isinstance(v, list):
		for j in v:
			print j.encode('utf-8').strip()
	elif isinstance(v, basestring):
		print v.encode('utf-8').strip() 
	else:
		print str(v).strip()

• File 'example.json'

{
  "example": 1,
  "hello": {
      "world": 2
   }
}

$ cat example.json | spy.py example hello.world
1
2