JSON formatted output of a snapshots

[steverpalmer]

Short Question: How can I get a clean JSON formatted output for a snapshots command? When I add --json, the output includes logging information before and after the JSON.

Longer Version:

I am a newbie to restic and resticprofile, though I used duplicity for many years. In my current system I'm happy to assume that backup tool is correctly "doing it's thing", with the more likely failure mode being that I've set it up wrong. Specifically, I run a bespoke test script (python) to check the dates on the backups, ensuring that they are being done frequently enough, with the results being fed into my system monitor (e.g. Zabbix/LibreNMS). One of the attractions of restic/resticprofile is the ability to get json formatted responses.

When I execute resticprofile snapshots --json I get:

2025/08/26 07:46:57 INFO  using configuration file: /home/steve/.config/resticprofile/profiles.yaml
2025/08/26 07:46:57 INFO  profile 'default': base directory is "/home/steve"
2025/08/26 07:46:57 INFO  profile 'default': starting 'snapshots'
[{"time":"2025-08-25T10:51:04.02627139+01:00","tree":"6144fbd98bafe7cfa0f80f35d00e804f513cc37d73969a5cf6bc141ebdb46313","paths":["/home/steve/Documents"],"hostname":"desktop2","username":"steve","uid":1000,"gid":1000,"id":"c35ec1ef03da090538e8ff0689029e6b40529a23a8ec784da93e0d7caaeadaaf","short_id":"c35ec1ef"},{"time":"2025-08-25T10:28:33.197562412Z","tree":"b291e675514597666cdd22b4530257741eaa4252705297ab72872d38cb238104","paths":["/etc/config"],"hostname":"router1","username":"root","excludes":[".git"],"id":"05e4464b298008dafd5b8471c2340864b23a76931eb29d0086a167958ad09d08","short_id":"05e4464b"},{"time":"2025-08-26T07:38:02.204159542+01:00","parent":"c35ec1ef03da090538e8ff0689029e6b40529a23a8ec784da93e0d7caaeadaaf","tree":"5ee99f61111a1971ea750fe3cfa18f481c1dbd0f22b14a00578b0921a2f2d04d","paths":["/home/steve/Documents"],"hostname":"desktop2","username":"steve","uid":1000,"gid":1000,"id":"19432ba060b68777d32794474c31b5b3fc2d8cf4dc24a92a2c6e49564ee08f46","short_id":"19432ba0"}]
2025/08/26 07:46:58 INFO  profile 'default': finished 'snapshots'

That is, the output is top-n-tailed by logging output. By-the-way, these lines do not appear when I use restic ... snapshots --json, so they appear to be a resticprofile feature.

Investigating the website, i found that I could add a logging directive to the config file, sending to the log to a (for now) temporary file.

[snip]
global:
  log: resticprofile.log
[snip]

I was expecting that the logging lines would go to the log file and that the JSON would appear alone on the standard output. I was surprised to find that the standard output was empty and the JSON had also moved to the log file.

Please can someone give me some pointers how to get JSON only output. Thanks.

For Reference:

  home:        https://github.com/creativeprojects/resticprofile
  version:     0.31.0
  commit:      81a6e45f50e3c2196ff4e62e85bfb61e0e5816a0
  compiled:    2025-05-26T11:45:37Z
  by:          goreleaser
  go version:  go1.24.3
  os:          linux
  arch:        386

  go modules:
    code.gitea.io/sdk/gitea                    v0.21.0
    github.com/42wim/httpsig                   v1.2.3
    github.com/Masterminds/semver/v3           v3.3.1
    github.com/adrg/xdg                        v0.5.3
    github.com/beorn7/perks                    v1.0.1
    github.com/cespare/xxhash/v2               v2.3.0
    github.com/coreos/go-systemd/v22           v22.5.0
    github.com/creativeprojects/clog           v0.14.0
    github.com/creativeprojects/go-selfupdate  v1.5.0
    github.com/distatus/battery                v0.11.0
    github.com/fatih/color                     v1.18.0
    github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify               v1.9.0
    github.com/go-fed/httpsig                  v1.1.0
    github.com/godbus/dbus/v5                  v5.1.0
    github.com/google/go-github/v30            v30.1.0
    github.com/google/go-querystring           v1.1.0
    github.com/hashicorp/go-cleanhttp          v0.5.2
    github.com/hashicorp/go-retryablehttp      v0.7.7
    github.com/hashicorp/go-version            v1.7.0
    github.com/hashicorp/hcl                   v1.0.0
    github.com/joho/godotenv                   v1.5.1
    github.com/mackerelio/go-osstat            v0.2.5
    github.com/magiconair/properties           v1.8.10
    github.com/mattn/go-colorable              v0.1.14
    github.com/mattn/go-isatty                 v0.0.20
    github.com/mitchellh/mapstructure          v1.5.0
    github.com/munnerz/goautoneg               v0.0.0-20191010083416-a7dc8b61c822
    github.com/pelletier/go-toml/v2            v2.2.4
    github.com/prometheus/client_golang        v1.22.0
    github.com/prometheus/client_model         v0.6.2
    github.com/prometheus/common               v0.63.0
    github.com/prometheus/procfs               v0.16.1
    github.com/sagikazarmark/slog-shim         v0.1.0
    github.com/shirou/gopsutil/v3              v3.24.5
    github.com/spf13/afero                     v1.14.0
    github.com/spf13/cast                      v1.8.0
    github.com/spf13/pflag                     v1.0.6
    github.com/spf13/viper                     v1.19.0
    github.com/subosito/gotenv                 v1.6.0
    github.com/tklauser/go-sysconf             v0.3.15
    github.com/tklauser/numcpus                v0.10.0
    github.com/ulikunitz/xz                    v0.5.12
    github.com/xanzy/go-gitlab                 v0.115.0
    golang.org/x/crypto                        v0.38.0
    golang.org/x/oauth2                        v0.30.0
    golang.org/x/sys                           v0.33.0
    golang.org/x/term                          v0.32.0
    golang.org/x/text                          v0.25.0
    golang.org/x/time                          v0.11.0
    google.golang.org/protobuf                 v1.36.6
    gopkg.in/ini.v1                            v1.67.0
    gopkg.in/yaml.v3                           v3.0.1

[creativeprojects]

Have you tried the --quiet (or -q) flag?

resticprofile --quiet snapshots --json

[steverpalmer]

Thanks - I missed that. Cheers.