Pretty Printing JSON

JSON is everywhere, but reading nested JSON without proper formatting can be a nightmare.

PostgreSQL

The function jsonb_pretty allows you to pretty print jsonb data.

\pset format unaligned
SELECT jsonb_pretty('{"name": "Lorenz", "team": {"name": "Team #1", "color", "blue"}}'::jsonb);

{
    "name": "Lorenz",
    "team": {
        "name": "Team #1",
        "color": "blue"
    }
}

Javascript

If you work with JSON data in Javascript, you surely know the function JSON.stringify. But did you know it can prettify your JSON as well?

JSON.stringify({"name": "Lorenz", "games_won": 4, "games_lost": 1}, null, 4)
                                      // number of spaces for indentation ^

{
    "name": "Lorenz",
    "games_won": 4,
    "games_lost": 1
}

Python

Python's json module adds functions to work with JSON.

>>> import json
>>> print(json.dumps({"players": [{"name": "Lorenz"}, {"name": "Philip"}]}, indent=4))

{
    "players": [
        {
            "name": "Lorenz"
        },
        {
            "name": "Philip"
        }
    ]
}

Command line using Python

You can also directly run the tool exposed by the json module from the command line:

$ echo '{"name": "Lorenz", "has_eyes": true}' | python3 -m json.tool

{
    "name": "Lorenz",
    "has_eyes": true
}