Output formats

Every command renders through one formatter, so the same flags work everywhere. Pick a format with -o, or let ph choose: a table when writing to a terminal, JSONL when piped.

Formats

ph <command> -o table     # a rounded, color-aware grid for reading
ph <command> -o markdown  # a GitHub pipe table to paste into docs (alias: md)
ph <command> -o list      # one record per section, easy on the eyes
ph <command> -o jsonl     # one JSON object per line, for piping
ph <command> -o json      # a single JSON array
ph <command> -o csv       # spreadsheet friendly
ph <command> -o tsv       # tab-separated
ph <command> -o url       # just the URL column
ph <command> -o raw       # the underlying bytes, unformatted

Format	Best for
table	Reading on a terminal: a rounded border with an accented header
markdown	Pasting into a README, issue, or PR (alias md)
list	Reading one record at a time: a heading and a short bullet list per record
jsonl	Piping into another tool, one object at a time
json	Loading a whole result as an array
csv / tsv	Spreadsheets and quick column math
url	Feeding URLs into other commands
raw	The unformatted bytes (response bodies, file contents)

Color

On an interactive terminal the table, list, and json/jsonl formats are colored: the table draws a dim border with an accented header, list styles each record's heading and keys, and JSON keys, strings, numbers, and literals are highlighted. Color is suppressed the moment output is not a terminal, so a pipe always gets plain, parseable bytes. Force the choice with --color always|never (or set NO_COLOR). markdown, csv, tsv, url, and raw are never colored, so they stay safe to redirect into a file.

Narrowing columns

Keep only the fields you want:

ph <command> --fields name,votes,url

--no-header drops the header row in table and csv output, which helps when a downstream tool expects bare rows.

Templating rows

For full control over each line, apply a Go text/template. Fields are the JSON keys, exactly as -o json prints them, in lower case:

ph <command> --template '{{.url}} {{.name}}'

Run a command with -o json once to see the field names you can reference.

Why auto-detection helps

Because the default adapts to the destination, the same command reads well by hand and parses cleanly in a pipe:

ph posts            # a table, because this is a terminal
ph posts | wc -l    # JSONL, because this is a pipe

You reach for -o when you want something other than that default.