• jsonfiddle - JSON Fiddling
• Usage
  • $ jsonfiddle
  • $ jsonfiddle esc
  • $ jsonfiddle fmt
  • $ jsonfiddle sort
  • $ jsonfiddle j2s
• Examples
  • Escape with jsonfiddle esc
    • $ jsonfiddle esc -i test/Customer.ref
    • Usage
  • Format with jsonfiddle fmt
    • Pretty print
      • > test/CustomerSI.ref
    • Compact
      • > test/Customer.ref
    • Sort fields with jsonfiddle sort
      • Sort with pretty print
        • > test/CustomerSI.ref
      • Sort in compact
        • > test/CustomerSC.ref
      • JSON to struct via jsonfiddle j2s
        • > test/CustomerJ2S.ref
• Purpose
• Download binaries
• Debian package
• Install Source
  • Credits
  • Similar Projects
  • Author(s) & Contributor(s)

The jsonfiddle makes it easy to look at the JSON data from different aspects.

• jsonfiddle fmt will format the JSON data, either compact it or pretty printing it. The order of fields are intact.
• jsonfiddle sort will sort the JSON data fields recursively, so that the attributes at any level are in sorted order.
• jsonfiddle j2s means json to struct. It will extract the structure of JSON data as Go struct.

JSON Fiddling
Version v0.3.0 built on 2017-08-14

Tool to fiddle with json strings

Options:

  -h, --help         display help information
  -c, --compact      Compact JSON data, remove all whitespaces
      --prefix       prefix for json string output
  -d, --indent[= ]   indent for json string output
  -v, --verbose      Verbose mode (Multiple -v options increase the verbosity.)

Commands:

  esc    Escape json string so as to embed it as content of json string
  fmt    Format json string
  sort   Sort json fields recursively
  j2s    JSON to struct

Escape json string so as to embed it as content of json string

Options:

  -h, --help         display help information
  -c, --compact      Compact JSON data, remove all whitespaces
      --prefix       prefix for json string output
  -d, --indent[= ]   indent for json string output
  -v, --verbose      Verbose mode (Multiple -v options increase the verbosity.)
  -i, --input       *the source to get json string from (mandatory)
  -o, --output       the output (default: stdout)

Format json string

Options:

  -h, --help         display help information
  -c, --compact      Compact JSON data, remove all whitespaces
      --prefix       prefix for json string output
  -d, --indent[= ]   indent for json string output
  -v, --verbose      Verbose mode (Multiple -v options increase the verbosity.)
  -i, --input       *the source to get json string from (mandatory)
  -o, --output       the output (default: stdout)

Sort json fields recursively

Options:

  -h, --help         display help information
  -c, --compact      Compact JSON data, remove all whitespaces
      --prefix       prefix for json string output
  -d, --indent[= ]   indent for json string output
  -v, --verbose      Verbose mode (Multiple -v options increase the verbosity.)
  -i, --input       *the source to get json string from (mandatory)
  -o, --output       the output (default: stdout)

JSON to struct

Options:

  -h, --help         display help information
  -c, --compact      Compact JSON data, remove all whitespaces
      --prefix       prefix for json string output
  -d, --indent[= ]   indent for json string output
  -v, --verbose      Verbose mode (Multiple -v options increase the verbosity.)
  -f, --fmt[=json]   the structural format of the input data (json/yaml)
  -i, --input       *the source of the input JSON (mandatory)
  -o, --output       the output (default: stdout)
      --name         the name of the root struct (default: as input file name)
      --pkg[=main]   the name of the package for the generated code
      --subStruct    create types for sub-structs

"{\n \"firstName\": \"John\",\n \"lastName\": \"Smith\",\n \"age\": 25,\n \"address\": {\n  \"streetAddress\": \"21 2nd Street\",\n  \"city\": \"New York\",\n  \"state\": \"NY\",\n  \"postalCode\": \"10021\"\n },\n \"phoneNumber\": [\n  {\n   \"type\": \"home\",\n   \"number\": \"212 555-1234\"\n  },\n  {\n   \"type\": \"fax\",\n   \"number\": \"646 555-4567\"\n  }\n ]\n}\n\n"

jsonfiddle esc will escape any arbitrary string so as to embed it as content of json string. This seems useless at first, but it actually allows you to embed any arbitrary file into GitHub Gists JSON API, so as to post any arbitrary file onto GitHub Gist:

echo '{"description":"SmartyStreets API Demo","public":true,"files":{"SmartyStreets.json":{"content":'"jsonfiddle fmt -i test/SmartyStreets.json | jsonfiddle esc -i"'}}}' | curl --data @- https://api.github.com/gists

This will give you https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1423d4768dd9b88262ca513626e68d8e

By "arbitrary file" I do mean arbitrary file. Check this out: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/a51798ce99ff59d8d4ba536cbf4b6996

This is why jsonfiddle esc is a command on its own, instead of being part of functionalities of jsonfiddle fmt or jsonfiddle sort.

$ jsonfiddle fmt -i test/Customer.json

{
 "address": {
  "city": "New York",
  "postalCode": "10021",
  "state": "NY",
  "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street"
 },
 "age": 25,
 "firstName": "John",
 "lastName": "Smith",
 "phoneNumber": [
  {
   "number": "212 555-1234",
   "type": "home"
  },
  {
   "number": "646 555-4567",
   "type": "fax"
  }
 ]
}

$ jsonfiddle fmt -c -i test/Customer.json

{
 "firstName": "John",
 "lastName": "Smith",
 "age": 25,
 "address": {
  "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street",
  "city": "New York",
  "state": "NY",
  "postalCode": "10021"
 },
 "phoneNumber": [
  {
   "type": "home",
   "number": "212 555-1234"
  },
  {
   "type": "fax",
   "number": "646 555-4567"
  }
 ]
}

You can also do,

$ cat Customer.json | jsonfiddle fmt -c -i

and the result is the same (and for all other examples using -i as well).

$ jsonfiddle sort -i test/Customer.json

{
 "address": {
  "city": "New York",
  "postalCode": "10021",
  "state": "NY",
  "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street"
 },
 "age": 25,
 "firstName": "John",
 "lastName": "Smith",
 "phoneNumber": [
  {
   "number": "212 555-1234",
   "type": "home"
  },
  {
   "number": "646 555-4567",
   "type": "fax"
  }
 ]
}

$ jsonfiddle sort -c -i test/Customer.json

{"address":{"city":"New York","postalCode":"10021","state":"NY","streetAddress":"21 2nd Street"},"age":25,"firstName":"John","lastName":"Smith","phoneNumber":[{"number":"212 555-1234","type":"home"},{"number":"646 555-4567","type":"fax"}]}

$ jsonfiddle j2s -i test/Customer.json

package main

type Customer struct {
	Address struct {
		City          string `json:"city"`
		PostalCode    string `json:"postalCode"`
		State         string `json:"state"`
		StreetAddress string `json:"streetAddress"`
	} `json:"address"`
	Age         int64  `json:"age"`
	FirstName   string `json:"firstName"`
	LastName    string `json:"lastName"`
	PhoneNumber []struct {
		Number string `json:"number"`
		Type   string `json:"type"`
	} `json:"phoneNumber"`
}

A few more words on why I'm writing the tool -- because I need to compare JSON string that are roughly close and very complicated in the mean time -- sometimes even less than 30% of fields are the same, of course, this is after their having been sorted, otherwise, it'd be 100% different.

Thus all the JSON comparison tools I found are failing under such hash request. So far, I personally find that

• Sorting the JSON data fields recursively and producing plain text file (via jsonfiddle sort), then use the state-of-the-art text comparison tools to compare them is the best approach, for my above scenario.
• For extremely long and very complicated JSONs, converting json to abstract Go struct (via jsonfiddle j2s) is the quickest approach to compare them at higher level.

• The latest binary executables are available under
  https://github.com/go-jsonfile/jsonfiddle/releases
  as the result of the Continuous-Integration process.
• I.e., they are built right from the source code during every git tagging commit automatically by travis-ci.
• Pick & choose the binary executable that suits your OS and its architecture. E.g., for Linux, it would most probably be the jsonfiddle_linux_VER_amd64 file. If your OS and its architecture is not available in the download list, please let me know and I'll add it.
• You may want to rename it to a shorter name instead, e.g., jsonfiddle, after downloading it.

Available at the above releases url as well.

To install the source code instead:

go get github.com/go-jsonfile/jsonfiddle

• Ladicle/gojson forked source for JSON to struct
• ChimeraCoder/gojson the original source of Ladicle/gojson.

All the following similar projects have been considered before writing one on my own instead.

Tong SUN

All patches welcome.