Just a shout-out to a few great online JSON tools that I use quite a lot when working with new JSON files. This is the version of the post updated in Nov 2024 with a couple of new additions.

The short version of the post is:

• http://json.parser.online.fr/ – pretty formats your JSON and does a bit more that makes it easy to see if the JSON is valid and will be parsed correctly
• http://json2table.com/ – renders the JSON as a table so that you can see the data more effectively (when relevant)
• [New] https://jsoncrack.com/ – allows you to visualise JSON into interactive graphs (and looks really pretty). It is a formatter, validator, visualizer, and editor that also works with YAML, CSV, XML, and TOML. It’s also open source and free for many use cases and the source is available on GitHub
• [New] https://json.pub/ – a site that also supports JSON, XML, serialized data, hex, base64 and binary. All processing is local and no data is sent to server.

Viewing JSON Files

Let’s say we have some JSON code (that I took from Sitepoint’s sample gallery for this test). So, what we have is this:

{
    "colorsArray":[{
            "colorName":"red",
            "hexValue":"#f00"
        },
        {
            "colorName":"green",
            "hexValue":"#0f0"
        },
        {
            "colorName":"blue",
            "hexValue":"#00f"
        },
        {
            "colorName":"cyan",
            "hexValue":"#0ff"
        },
        {
            "colorName":"magenta",
            "hexValue":"#f0f"
        },
        {
            "colorName":"yellow",
            "hexValue":"#ff0"
        },
        {
            "colorName":"black",
            "hexValue":"#000"
        }
    ]
}

It shows you what you paste, a tree structure for the objects and also what it becomes after it’s evaluated in Javascript. The menu on top has additional options that can be configured.

Especially for tables

If your data is naturally well-suited for being visualized as a table, then the first site doesn’t go far enough. That’s where http://json2table.com/ comes in. It does just that – takes your data and renders it into a table. It also does render the tree if you need it.

Visualise, validate and explore

The site, https://jsoncrack.com/ is something I saw online recently. It allows you to visualise JSON into interactive graphs (and looks really pretty). It is a formatter, validator, visualizer, and editor that also works with YAML, CSV, XML, and TOML. It’s also open source and free for many use cases and the source is available on GitHub

JSON Viewer and Formatter

https://json.pub/ looks pretty bland and simple. However, it does also support JSON along with XML, serialized data, hex, base64 and binary. Also, all processing is local and no data is sent to server.

Are there any other tools that you really like? Comments welcome. You can comment below, or connect with onghu@x or @onghu@ruby.social on Mastodon and now also with @notepad.onghu.com on Bluesky to discuss further.