Is there a way to export a BigQuery table's schema as JSON?

A BigQuery table has schema which can be viewed in the web UI, updated, or used to load data with the bq tool as a JSON file. However, I can't find a way to dump this schema from an existing table to a JSON file (preferably from the command-line). Is that possible?

> a way to dump schema from an existing table to a JSON file (preferably from the command-line). Is that possible?

try below

bq show bigquery-public-data:samples.wikipedia  

You can use –format flag to prettify output

--format: none|json|prettyjson|csv|sparse|pretty:

Format for command output. Options include:

none:       ...
pretty:     formatted table output  
sparse:     simpler table output  
prettyjson: easy-to-read JSON format  
json:       maximally compact JSON  
csv:        csv format with header   

The first three are intended to be human-readable, and the latter three are for passing to another program. If no format is selected, one will be chosen based on the command run.

Realized I provided partial answer :o)

Below does what PO wanted

bq show --format=prettyjson bigquery-public-data:samples.wikipedia | jq '.schema.fields' 

You can add the flag --schema[1] in order to avoid table data information.

bq show --schema --format=prettyjson [PROJECT_ID]:[DATASET].[TABLE] > [SCHEMA_FILE]

bq show --schema --format=prettyjson myprojectid:mydataset.mytable > /tmp/myschema.json

[1] https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/managing-table-schemas

Answer update

Since October 2020, you can also run a SQL query on INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS which is kind of an introspective functionality.

SELECT *
FROM <YOUR_DATASET>.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS

and nest the data using an aggregation function such as

SELECT table_name, ARRAY_AGG(STRUCT(column_name, data_type)) as columns
FROM <YOUR_DATASET>.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
GROUP BY table_name

The are also interesting metadata in INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS if you also need the source code from your views.

Then hit save results / JSON from the BigQuery interface, or wrap it into the bq query command line in your case.

Source: BigQuery release notes

You can use REST API call to get BigQuery table schema as JSON. Documentation link: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/rest/v2/tables/get

curl 'https://bigquery.googleapis.com/bigquery/v2/projects/project-name/datasets/dataset-name/tables/table-name' \
     --header 'Authorization: Bearer [YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN]' \
     --header 'Accept: application/json' \
     --compressed

As of 15th May 2022, this worked:

1. In google cloud, Go to cloud shell
2. Select the project from drop down (left) of cloud shell
3. Use below command bq show --schema --format=prettyjson .