BetaDeveloper

Output formats

Pick the right output format for humans, scripts, spreadsheets, and AI agents.

Warning: This product is in Beta stage and we may release breaking changes.

Several SonarQube CLI commands can output their results in different formats. Pick the one that matches what's consuming the output.

Available formats

Format
Best for
Notes

json

Scripts, dashboards, downstream tools.

A JSON array or object. Default for sonar list issues; the only output of sonar list projects.

table

Reading in your terminal.

A human-friendly aligned table. Adds no headers or borders that would break copy/paste.

csv

Spreadsheets, BI tools, archives.

Comma-separated values with a header row.

toon

AI coding agents and LLM consumption.

Token-Oriented Object Notation (TOON), a token-efficient, LLM-friendly serialization. Use it when piping data into Claude or Copilot.

text

Default for analysis commands.

Native human-readable output. Used by sonar analyze, sonar analyze agentic, and deprecated sonar verify.

Which command supports which format

Command
Supported formats
Default

sonar list issues

json, toon, table, csv

json

sonar list projects

json (only)

json

sonar analyze / analyze agentic / verify (deprecated)

text, json

text

sonar analyze secrets

(no --format; text only)

-

sonar remediate

(no --format; interactive)

-

sonar api

Raw response body

-

Choosing a format

  • You're a person reading the output. Use table for list commands, or stick with the default text for analysis.

  • You're a script. Use json. It's stable, structured, and widely supported.

  • You're piping into a spreadsheet or BI tool. Use csv.

  • You're piping into an AI agent (Claude Code, Copilot, etc.). Use toon. It packs the same information into far fewer tokens than JSON, letting the agent see more of the data inside its context window.

Examples

Human-readable issues list:

Pipe issues into jq:

Export issues to a spreadsheet:

Feed issues to an AI agent:

Last updated

Was this helpful?