I am not a huge Firefox user, but, there are so many things that are great about it & about how it's made that I sometimes get sad it isn't as popular as it used to be especially given the fact that Google & Google Chrome (which are destroying the internet...) have no real competition.
Here is a quick example...
Firefox publishes a URL to get information about updates & releases which returns a simple JSON object:
% curl -LsS https://product-details.mozilla.org/1.0/firefox_versions.json
{
"FIREFOX_AURORA": "",
"FIREFOX_DEVEDITION": "101.0b9",
"FIREFOX_ESR": "91.9.1esr",
"FIREFOX_ESR_NEXT": "",
"FIREFOX_NIGHTLY": "102.0a1",
"FIREFOX_PINEBUILD": "",
"LAST_MERGE_DATE": "2022-05-02",
"LAST_RELEASE_DATE": "2022-05-03",
"LAST_SOFTFREEZE_DATE": "2022-04-28",
"LATEST_FIREFOX_DEVEL_VERSION": "101.0b9",
"LATEST_FIREFOX_OLDER_VERSION": "3.6.28",
"LATEST_FIREFOX_RELEASED_DEVEL_VERSION": "101.0b9",
"LATEST_FIREFOX_VERSION": "100.0.2",
"NEXT_MERGE_DATE": "2022-05-30",
"NEXT_RELEASE_DATE": "2022-05-31",
"NEXT_SOFTFREEZE_DATE": "2022-05-26"
}
So easy & practical. Want the latest Firefox version? Here's one way that does not require anything other than commands available in the shell:
% jsonval(){
JSON="$1" osascript -l 'JavaScript' \\
-e 'const env = $.NSProcessInfo.processInfo.environment.objectForKey("JSON").js' \\
-e "JSON.parse(env).$2"
}
% data="$(curl -LsS https://product-details.mozilla.org/1.0/firefox_versions.json)"
% key='LATEST_FIREFOX_VERSION'
% jsonval "$data" "$key"
100.0.2
Much of the credit for this code belongs to these posts:
https://paulgalow.com/how-to-work-with-json-api-data-in-macos-shell-scripts
https://www.macblog.org/parse-json-command-line-mac/
with assistance from @pico in the macadmins Slack #scripting & #bash channels.
My absolute favorite thing in the Firefox update data, however, is "NEXT_RELEASE_DATE" !!!!
% key='NEXT_RELEASE_DATE'
% jsonval "$data" "$key"
2022-05-31
If only all software publishers were so organized & conscientious...