JSON formatter and pretty printer

What the JSON formatter does

Formatting turns a single line of compact JSON into an indented structure where every object and array is easy to scan. DocuFormat uses two-space indentation and keeps your key order exactly as written.

Because formatting is done by a real parser rather than a language model, the result is predictable: the same input always gives the same output, and the data itself never changes, only the whitespace around it.

Pretty print, beautify, or minify

“Pretty printing” and “beautifying” are the same operation under two names: add line breaks and indentation. Minifying is the reverse. It strips optional whitespace so the payload is as small as it can be, which is handy for config values, query strings and test fixtures.

Both directions are available from the same input. Format to read it, minify to ship it, then use Swap to move the output back into the input if you want to keep working on it.

Strict JSON, not “JSON-ish”

The formatter follows the JSON specification. It will not quietly accept things that other tools tolerate but real parsers reject:

• comments (// or /* */)
• trailing commas after the last item
• unquoted property names
• single-quoted strings

When any of these show up, formatting stops and DocuFormat reports the problem with a line and column. That is usually exactly what you need when a service is returning a 400 for your payload. See the JSON validator for how errors are reported, or the JSON fixer for repairing them.

When to use it

• Reading an API response copied from logs, a terminal or browser dev tools.
• Cleaning up a config file before a code review.
• Checking that a hand-edited fixture is still valid.
• Shrinking a pretty-printed document before embedding it somewhere.

Questions, answered