Output formatting and filtering

All CLI command output is sent to stdout, and can be customized in terms of output values as well as format.

Default output format

By default, any output is formatted in a human-readable, columnar format like so:

1$ twilio phone-numbers:list
2SID                                 Phone Number  Friendly Name
3PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  +1209242XXXX  SIP testing
4PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  +1646887XXXX  Congress hotline
5PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  +1209337XXXX  DAVID'S SECRET CRUSH

Specify output values

Many list commands will allow you to specify a --properties option defining which columns you'd like to display. For example, to display only the Phone Number and SMS URL columns, you would pass --properties "phoneNumber, smsUrl".

1$ twilio phone-numbers:list --properties 'phoneNumber, smsUrl'
2Phone Number  SMS URL
3+1209242XXXX  https://very-secret.ngrok.io/sms
4+1646887XXXX  https://handler.twilio.com/twiml/EHxxxx
5+1209337XXXX

Column names must match the camelCased JSON property names in the Twilio API for the resource. For example, you can find the possible column values for phone numbers by looking at the Incoming Phone Number API Reference

(information)

Info

The default list of properties varies by command, and is subject to change with each release.

JSON output format

Append the -o json flag to a command to change the output format to JSON. When you choose JSON, the command will send the entire API response to stdout as JSON.

You can then pipe this output to tools like jq to parse the JSON as necessary.

For example:

1# Fetch all incoming phone numbers as json, and display as an array
2# that only contains each sid and phone number.
3$ twilio phone-numbers:list -o json \
4    | jq '.[] | {sid, phoneNumber, smsUrl, voiceUrl}'
5
6{
7  "sid": "PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
8  "phoneNumber": "+1209242XXXX",
9  "smsUrl": "https://very-secret.ngrok.io/sms",
10  "voiceUrl": "https://very-secret.ngrok.io/answer"
11}
12{
13  "sid": "PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
14  "phoneNumber": "+1646887XXXX",
15  "smsUrl": "https://handler.twilio.com/twiml/EHxxxx",
16  "voiceUrl": "https://demo.twilio.com/welcome/voice/"
17}
18{
19  "sid": "PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
20  "phoneNumber": "+1209337XXXX",
21  "smsUrl": "",
22  "voiceUrl": ""
23}

(warning)

Warning

The --properties flag does not modify command output when combined with -o json.

For example, twilio phone-numbers:list -o json --properties sid | jq . will return the entire, unmodified JSON response, not an array of objects containing sid.

Tab separated values output format

To change the output format to tab separated values (TSV), add -o tsv to a command.

This format is useful for loading information into spreadsheets, or for other machine processing. Like the default, columnar output format, you can use the --properties option to specify which columns you would like included.

1$ twilio phone-numbers:list -o tsv
2sid   phoneNumber  friendlyName
3PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    +1209242XXXX    SIP testing
4PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    +1646887XXXX    Congress hotline
5PNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    +1209337XXXX    DAVID'S SECRET CRUSH