---
id: jsonata-python
version: "0.7.0"
license: Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004 http://www.apache.org/licenses/ TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION 1. Definitions. "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# jsonata-python — Pure Python implementation of JSONata

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 1.7M/mo

## What it is and what it does

jsonata-python is a pure Python port of the JSONata reference implementation, a query and transformation language for JSON. It lets you write compact expressions to extract, filter, and reshape JSON data—similar to XPath for XML or jq for command-line JSON work. The package supports the full JSONata language specification with no external dependencies, making it straightforward to embed in Python applications or use as a CLI tool.

The package includes guardrails to protect against untrusted expressions: you can set execution timeouts, stack depth limits, and swap in alternative regex engines to prevent ReDoS attacks. It requires Python 3.10 or later, and date/time functions using ISO 8601 formats require Python 3.11+.

Use it for:

- Extract and transform JSON API responses in data pipelines without writing custom parsing code.
- Build a CLI tool that accepts JSONata expressions to query JSON files or stdin.
- Safely evaluate user-provided JSONata expressions in a web service with configurable timeout and stack limits.
- Filter and aggregate nested JSON structures in ETL workflows or reporting systems.
- Implement interactive REPL environments for JSON exploration and ad-hoc data analysis.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Evaluates JSONata expressions against JSON data, supporting the full JSONata language with no external runtime dependencies.

Yes. jsonata-python is actively maintained, has zero known vulnerabilities, installs with no friction, and is permissively licensed. Install it if you need to evaluate JSONata expressions in Python or want a command-line tool for JSON querying. The only caveat is the Python 3.10+ requirement and the ISO 8601 date/time limitation on Python versions below 3.11.

## Install

pip install jsonata-python
uv add jsonata-python
poetry add jsonata-python

## Installing jsonata-python

Before you install: Low friction install with no runtime dependencies. Actively maintained; last release 40 days ago with 104 repository stars.

License in practice: Apache License 2.0 (permissive): you can use, modify, and distribute freely in commercial and private projects, provided you include a copy of the license and note any changes.

Quickstart:

pip install jsonata-python

import jsonata
data = {"example": [{"value": 4}, {"value": 7}, {"value": 13}]}
expr = jsonata.Jsonata("$sum(example.value)")
result = expr.evaluate(data)
print(result)  # 24

Requires Python 3.10 or later; ISO 8601 date/time functions require Python 3.11+

Verify before relying:

- Performance characteristics when evaluating complex expressions against large datasets
- Behavior of date/time functions on Python 3.10 when ISO 8601 formats are used

## Package facts

- License: Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004 http://www.apache.org/licenses/ TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION 1. Definitions. "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 1.7M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

json query language, jsonata expression evaluator, json transformation, json data extraction, jsonata python port, json filtering and mapping, json path queries, json-query, data-transformation

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