How can I pretty-print JSON using JavaScript?

Question

How can I display JSON in an easy-to-read (for human readers) format? I'm looking primarily for indentation and whitespace, with perhaps even colors / font-styles / etc.

Answer 1

Unsatisfied with other pretty printers for Ruby, I wrote my own (NeatJSON) and then ported it to JavaScript including a free online formatter. The code is free under MIT license (quite permissive).

Features (all optional):

• Set a line width and wrap in a way that keeps objects and arrays on the same line when they fit, wrapping one value per line when they don't.
• Sort object keys if you like.
• Align object keys (line up the colons).
• Format floating point numbers to specific number of decimals, without messing up the integers.
• 'Short' wrapping mode puts opening and closing brackets/braces on the same line as values, providing a format that some prefer.
• Granular control over spacing for arrays and objects, between brackets, before/after colons and commas.
• Function is made available to both web browsers and Node.js.

I'll copy the source code here so that this is not just a link to a library, but I encourage you to go to the GitHub project page, as that will be kept up-to-date and the code below will not.

(function(exports){
exports.neatJSON = neatJSON;

function neatJSON(value,opts){
  opts = opts || {}
  if (!('wrap'          in opts)) opts.wrap = 80;
  if (opts.wrap==true) opts.wrap = -1;
  if (!('indent'        in opts)) opts.indent = '  ';
  if (!('arrayPadding'  in opts)) opts.arrayPadding  = ('padding' in opts) ? opts.padding : 0;
  if (!('objectPadding' in opts)) opts.objectPadding = ('padding' in opts) ? opts.padding : 0;
  if (!('afterComma'    in opts)) opts.afterComma    = ('aroundComma' in opts) ? opts.aroundComma : 0;
  if (!('beforeComma'   in opts)) opts.beforeComma   = ('aroundComma' in opts) ? opts.aroundComma : 0;
  if (!('afterColon'    in opts)) opts.afterColon    = ('aroundColon' in opts) ? opts.aroundColon : 0;
  if (!('beforeColon'   in opts)) opts.beforeColon   = ('aroundColon' in opts) ? opts.aroundColon : 0;

  var apad  = repeat(' ',opts.arrayPadding),
      opad  = repeat(' ',opts.objectPadding),
      comma = repeat(' ',opts.beforeComma)+','+repeat(' ',opts.afterComma),
      colon = repeat(' ',opts.beforeColon)+':'+repeat(' ',opts.afterColon);

  return build(value,'');

  function build(o,indent){
    if (o===null || o===undefined) return indent+'null';
    else{
      switch(o.constructor){
        case Number:
          var isFloat = (o === +o && o !== (o|0));
          return indent + ((isFloat && ('decimals' in opts)) ? o.toFixed(opts.decimals) : (o+''));

        case Array:
          var pieces  = o.map(function(v){ return build(v,'') });
          var oneLine = indent+'['+apad+pieces.join(comma)+apad+']';
          if (opts.wrap===false || oneLine.length<=opts.wrap) return oneLine;
          if (opts.short){
            var indent2 = indent+' '+apad;
            pieces = o.map(function(v){ return build(v,indent2) });
            pieces[0] = pieces[0].replace(indent2,indent+'['+apad);
            pieces[pieces.length-1] = pieces[pieces.length-1]+apad+']';
            return pieces.join(',\n');
          }else{
            var indent2 = indent+opts.indent;
            return indent+'[\n'+o.map(function(v){ return build(v,indent2) }).join(',\n')+'\n'+indent+']';
          }

        case Object:
          var keyvals=[],i=0;
          for (var k in o) keyvals[i++] = [JSON.stringify(k), build(o[k],'')];
          if (opts.sorted) keyvals = keyvals.sort(function(kv1,kv2){ kv1=kv1[0]; kv2=kv2[0]; return kv1<kv2?-1:kv1>kv2?1:0 });
          keyvals = keyvals.map(function(kv){ return kv.join(colon) }).join(comma);
          var oneLine = indent+"{"+opad+keyvals+opad+"}";
          if (opts.wrap===false || oneLine.length<opts.wrap) return oneLine;
          if (opts.short){
            var keyvals=[],i=0;
            for (var k in o) keyvals[i++] = [indent+' '+opad+JSON.stringify(k),o[k]];
            if (opts.sorted) keyvals = keyvals.sort(function(kv1,kv2){ kv1=kv1[0]; kv2=kv2[0]; return kv1<kv2?-1:kv1>kv2?1:0 });
            keyvals[0][0] = keyvals[0][0].replace(indent+' ',indent+'{');
            if (opts.aligned){
              var longest = 0;
              for (var i=keyvals.length;i--;) if (keyvals[i][0].length>longest) longest = keyvals[i][0].length;
              var padding = repeat(' ',longest);
              for (var i=keyvals.length;i--;) keyvals[i][0] = padRight(padding,keyvals[i][0]);
            }
            for (var i=keyvals.length;i--;){
              var k=keyvals[i][0], v=keyvals[i][1];
              var indent2 = repeat(' ',(k+colon).length);
              var oneLine = k+colon+build(v,'');
              keyvals[i] = (opts.wrap===false || oneLine.length<=opts.wrap || !v || typeof v!="object") ? oneLine : (k+colon+build(v,indent2).replace(/^\s+/,''));
            }
            return keyvals.join(',\n') + opad + '}';
          }else{
            var keyvals=[],i=0;
            for (var k in o) keyvals[i++] = [indent+opts.indent+JSON.stringify(k),o[k]];
            if (opts.sorted) keyvals = keyvals.sort(function(kv1,kv2){ kv1=kv1[0]; kv2=kv2[0]; return kv1<kv2?-1:kv1>kv2?1:0 });
            if (opts.aligned){
              var longest = 0;
              for (var i=keyvals.length;i--;) if (keyvals[i][0].length>longest) longest = keyvals[i][0].length;
              var padding = repeat(' ',longest);
              for (var i=keyvals.length;i--;) keyvals[i][0] = padRight(padding,keyvals[i][0]);
            }
            var indent2 = indent+opts.indent;
            for (var i=keyvals.length;i--;){
              var k=keyvals[i][0], v=keyvals[i][1];
              var oneLine = k+colon+build(v,'');
              keyvals[i] = (opts.wrap===false || oneLine.length<=opts.wrap || !v || typeof v!="object") ? oneLine : (k+colon+build(v,indent2).replace(/^\s+/,''));
            }
            return indent+'{\n'+keyvals.join(',\n')+'\n'+indent+'}'
          }

        default:
          return indent+JSON.stringify(o);
      }
    }
  }

  function repeat(str,times){ // http://stackoverflow.com/a/17800645/405017
    var result = '';
    while(true){
      if (times & 1) result += str;
      times >>= 1;
      if (times) str += str;
      else break;
    }
    return result;
  }
  function padRight(pad, str){
    return (str + pad).substring(0, pad.length);
  }
}
neatJSON.version = "0.5";

})(typeof exports === 'undefined' ? this : exports);

Answer 2

Here is how you can print without using native function.

function pretty(ob, lvl = 0) {

  let temp = [];

  if(typeof ob === "object"){
    for(let x in ob) {
      if(ob.hasOwnProperty(x)) {
        temp.push( getTabs(lvl+1) + x + ":" + pretty(ob[x], lvl+1) );
      }
    }
    return "{\n"+ temp.join(",\n") +"\n" + getTabs(lvl) + "}";
  }
  else {
    return ob;
  }

}

function getTabs(n) {
  let c = 0, res = "";
  while(c++ < n)
    res+="\t";
  return res;
}

let obj = {a: {b: 2}, x: {y: 3}};
console.log(pretty(obj));

/*
  {
    a: {
      b: 2
    },
    x: {
      y: 3
    }
  }
*/

Answer 3

Here's user123444555621's awesome HTML one adapted for terminals. Handy for debugging Node scripts:

function prettyJ(json) {
  if (typeof json !== 'string') {
    json = JSON.stringify(json, undefined, 2);
  }
  return json.replace(/("(\\u[a-zA-Z0-9]{4}|\\[^u]|[^\\"])*"(\s*:)?|\b(true|false|null)\b|-?\d+(?:\.\d*)?(?:[eE][+\-]?\d+)?)/g, 
    function (match) {
      let cls = "\x1b[36m";
      if (/^"/.test(match)) {
        if (/:$/.test(match)) {
          cls = "\x1b[34m";
        } else {
          cls = "\x1b[32m";
        }
      } else if (/true|false/.test(match)) {
        cls = "\x1b[35m"; 
      } else if (/null/.test(match)) {
        cls = "\x1b[31m";
      }
      return cls + match + "\x1b[0m";
    }
  );
}

Usage:

// thing = any json OR string of json
prettyJ(thing);

Answer 4

The simplest way to display an object for debugging purposes:

console.log("data",data) // lets you unfold the object manually

If you want to display the object in the DOM, you should consider that it could contain strings that would be interpreted as HTML. Therefore, you need to do some escaping...

var s = JSON.stringify(data,null,2) // format
var e = new Option(s).innerHTML // escape
document.body.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend','<pre>'+e+'</pre>') // display

Answer 5

This is nice:

https://github.com/mafintosh/json-markup from mafintosh

const jsonMarkup = require('json-markup')
const html = jsonMarkup({hello:'world'})
document.querySelector('#myElem').innerHTML = html

HTML

<link ref="stylesheet" href="style.css">
<div id="myElem></div>

Example stylesheet can be found here

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mafintosh/json-markup/master/style.css

Answer 6

Based on Pumbaa80's answer I have modified the code to use the console.log colours (working on Chrome for sure) and not HTML. Output can be seen inside console. You can edit the _variables inside the function adding some more styling.

function JSONstringify(json) {
    if (typeof json != 'string') {
        json = JSON.stringify(json, undefined, '\t');
    }

    var 
        arr = [],
        _string = 'color:green',
        _number = 'color:darkorange',
        _boolean = 'color:blue',
        _null = 'color:magenta',
        _key = 'color:red';

    json = json.replace(/("(\\u[a-zA-Z0-9]{4}|\\[^u]|[^\\"])*"(\s*:)?|\b(true|false|null)\b|-?\d+(?:\.\d*)?(?:[eE][+\-]?\d+)?)/g, function (match) {
        var style = _number;
        if (/^"/.test(match)) {
            if (/:$/.test(match)) {
                style = _key;
            } else {
                style = _string;
            }
        } else if (/true|false/.test(match)) {
            style = _boolean;
        } else if (/null/.test(match)) {
            style = _null;
        }
        arr.push(style);
        arr.push('');
        return '%c' + match + '%c';
    });

    arr.unshift(json);

    console.log.apply(console, arr);
}

Here is a bookmarklet you can use:

javascript:function JSONstringify(json) {if (typeof json != 'string') {json = JSON.stringify(json, undefined, '\t');}var arr = [],_string = 'color:green',_number = 'color:darkorange',_boolean = 'color:blue',_null = 'color:magenta',_key = 'color:red';json = json.replace(/("(\\u[a-zA-Z0-9]{4}|\\[^u]|[^\\"])*"(\s*:)?|\b(true|false|null)\b|-?\d+(?:\.\d*)?(?:[eE][+\-]?\d+)?)/g, function (match) {var style = _number;if (/^"/.test(match)) {if (/:$/.test(match)) {style = _key;} else {style = _string;}} else if (/true|false/.test(match)) {style = _boolean;} else if (/null/.test(match)) {style = _null;}arr.push(style);arr.push('');return '%c' + match + '%c';});arr.unshift(json);console.log.apply(console, arr);};void(0);

Usage:

var obj = {a:1, 'b':'foo', c:[false,null, {d:{e:1.3e5}}]};
JSONstringify(obj);

Edit: I just tried to escape the % symbol with this line, after the variables declaration:

json = json.replace(/%/g, '%%');

But I find out that Chrome is not supporting % escaping in the console. Strange... Maybe this will work in the future.

Cheers!