jq is a very versatile tool for working with structured information in json format, the command syntax of jq is also structured by means of a processing pipeline, similar to that of a unix shell, again each processing step acts as a filter/modifier of the input received from the preceding stage. Again on might look at each of these stages as functions in a functional program. This tutorial tries to explain jq in terms of example pipelines; each example comes with links that show you the intermediate results for each stage of the processing pipeline; i think this makes it easier to understand each of the building blocks involved. You can click either on any one of the commands to show the command and how it transforms the input json structure into the output json, each pipe symbol is also a link that will show you the information that flows through it. The html for this tutorial is generated by this script