How can I pretty-print JSON using node.js?

492
votes

This seems like a solved problem but I am unable to find a solution for it.

Basically, I read a JSON file, change a key, and write back the new JSON to the same file. All works, but I loose the JSON formatting.So, instead of:

{
  name:'test',
  version:'1.0'
}

I get

{name:'test',version:'1.1'}

Is there a way in Node.js to write well formatted JSON to file ?

7
jsonnode.js
JSON.stringify chokes on cyclic objects, and util.inspect doesn't produce valid json. :\ I found no [native] solution to pretty printing JSON in NodeJS – ThorSummoner
@ThorSummoner: That is a problem with JSON, not with Node—JSON does not natively support cyclic references. There is a solution here, in another question. – Sasha Chedygov

7 Answers

938
votes

JSON.stringify's third parameter defines white-space insertion for pretty-printing. It can be a string or a number (number of spaces). Node can write to your filesystem with fs. Example:

var fs = require('fs');

fs.writeFile('test.json', JSON.stringify({ a:1, b:2, c:3 }, null, 4));
/* test.json:
{
     "a": 1,
     "b": 2,
     "c": 3,
}
*/

See the JSON.stringify() docs at MDN, Node fs docs

225
votes

I think this might be useful... I love example code :)

var fs = require('fs');

var myData = {
  name:'test',
  version:'1.0'
}

var outputFilename = '/tmp/my.json';

fs.writeFile(outputFilename, JSON.stringify(myData, null, 4), function(err) {
    if(err) {
      console.log(err);
    } else {
      console.log("JSON saved to " + outputFilename);
    }
});
99
votes

If you just want to pretty print an object and not export it as valid JSON you can use console.dir().

It uses syntax-highlighting, smart indentation, removes quotes from keys and just makes the output as pretty as it gets.

const jsonString = `{"name":"John","color":"green",
                     "smoker":false,"id":7,"city":"Berlin"}`
const object = JSON.parse(jsonString)

console.dir(object, {depth: null, colors: true})

Screenshot of logged object

Under the hood it is a shortcut for console.log(util.inspect(…)). The only difference is that it bypasses any custom inspect() function defined on an object.

39
votes

If you don't want to store this anywhere, but just view the object for debugging purposes.

console.log(JSON.stringify(object, null, "  "));

You can change the third parameter to adjust the indentation.

23
votes

what about this?

console.table(object)

sample

3
votes

I know this is old question. But maybe this can help you 😀

JSON string

var jsonStr = '{ "bool": true, "number": 123, "string": "foo bar" }';

Pretty Print JSON

JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(jsonStr), null, 2);

Minify JSON

JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(jsonStr));
2
votes

Another workaround would be to make use of prettier to format the JSON. The example below is using 'json' parser but it could also use 'json5', see list of valid parsers.

const prettier = require("prettier");
console.log(prettier.format(JSON.stringify(object),{ semi: false, parser: "json" }));