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

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 ?

Solution 1:

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

Solution 2:

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);
    }
}); 

Solution 3:

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})

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.

Solution 4:

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.