jq, variables, select and numbers? - json

Question

It seems that jq's "select", when used with variables, only works for text strings, but not for numbers.
How do I use jq so that I can select no matter if the value is a number or not?
$ cat test.json
[
{
"id": "some-text",
"output": "jq select works!"
},
{
"id": 123,
"output": "jq select doesn't work :("
}
]
Let's try to select "output" where "id" is "some-text" - it works:
$ ID="some-text"
$ cat test.json | jq -r --arg ID "$ID" '.[] | select(.id==$ID) | .output'
jq select works!
$
Let's try to select "output" where "id" is "123" - it doesn't work:
$ ID="123"
$ cat test.json | jq -r --arg ID "$ID" '.[] | select(.id==$ID) | .output'
$
Interestingly, "select" does work if I don't pass the variable via --arg:
$ cat test.json | jq -r '.[] | select(.id==123) | .output'
jq select doesn't work :(
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You can use --argjson instead off -arg to let JQ handle it as a number:
➜ ID="123"
➜ cat test.json | jq -r --argjson ID "$ID" '.[] | select(.id==$ID) | .output'
jq select doesn't work :(
➜
You could also use tostring to convert the ID to a string so you can keep the existing format;
➜ ID="123"
➜ cat test.json | jq -r --arg ID "$ID" '.[] | select(.id|tostring==$ID) | .output'
jq select doesn't work :(
➜
➜ ID="some-text"
➜ cat test.json | jq -r --arg ID "$ID" '.[] | select(.id|tostring==$ID) | .output'
jq select works!
➜