Can I chain API calls through drush?

Question

API chaining works well in Javascript and PHP. For example, I can retrieve a contact's email addresses using this code generated by the API Explorer:

Php

$result = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'getsingle', array(
  'sequential' => 1,
  'return' => "display_name",
  'id' => 41194,
  'api.Email.get' => array('return' => "email"),
));

Javascript

CRM.api3('Contact', 'getsingle', {
  "sequential": 1,
  "return": "display_name",
  "id": 41194,
  "api.Email.get": {"return":"email"}
}).done(function(result) {
  // do something
});

However, the drush command generated by the API explorer doesn't work:

drush cvapi Contact.getsingle sequential=1 return="display_name" id=41194 api.Email.get={"return":"email"}
# Gives me the contact just fine, but no email

Is there any way to coax drush cvapi into processing chained api calls? If it's not currently possible, is anybody working on it?

In the meantime, how can I help to correct the API Explorer so it doesn't produce non-working drush commands?

Answer 1

Drush can read parameters from standard input in JSON format if you supply the argument --in=json. This is what we need for API chaining, because chaining uses nested parameters, and in contrast to a flat list of command line arguments (the default way to pass parameters to drush cvapi, JSON can handle nesting. So to retrieve the email addresses for contact ID 41194 along with that contact's display name, use:

echo '{
  "sequential": 1,
  "return": "display_name",
  "id": 41194,
  "api.Email.get": {"return":"email"}
}' | drush cvapi Contact.getsingle --in=json