Datafu is a Rust library for extracting data from config objects and other arbitrary object graphs, using a custom query language. As a query language, it takes on aspects of both XPath and jq, but differs significantly in scope. As a library, it attempts to keep things relatively straightforward.
XPath is more-or-less standard. While it is primarily designed for XML, there are implementations of XPath that can work with JSON and other formats. It's also more or less type-aware and can do operations like numeric range checks without the use of user callbacks.
Unlike XPath, Datafu is not primarily designed for XML, but rather as a more general-purpose tool that can also be used for XML. It even supports cyclic graphs, such as those which can be found in Lua tables.
jq is first and foremost a CLI tool. It's also Turing-complete. If an undecidable schema isn't your thing, and the previous section of this README didn't convince you to use XPath, then Datafu should be your tool of choice.
```text Datafu - Rust library for extracting data from object graphs. Copyright (C) 2021 Soni L.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/. ```