What do you do if you need to compact a JSON document but the file has more than 400 MB and 20 Million lines? Or the other way around, you have a large document and it is impossible to read because it has no formatting? So you need a JSON editor which can do two things for you. The editor can open and view really large text files and it needs to know how to format or compact your JSON data. Luckily, JSONBuddy can do both for you.
Simply select your large JSON document in the built-in File Explorer window. You can also select multiple files if you need to do this for several documents:
Remove whitespace from big JSON data
Run either the “Pretty-print JSON” or “Remove whitespace from JSON” command from the JSON menu. JSONBuddy will save the output document next to the original JSON with a new file name. You will still have the original content as before on your disk.
Of course, you can run both commands on the current document in the JSON editor.
So, I got this message not too long ago from a new user of JSONBuddy.
The user wrote: “Trying to read log files generated with NLog in Json format. JSONBuddy JSON editor complaining about format. Example data from file: { … some sample data… }”
Apparently, the user, let’s call him John to make this sound less “robotic”, was experiencing issues with reading a JSON log file generated with NLog and he was curious if JSONBuddy can help as a mature JSON editor.
Use JSONBuddy to open your log data
First things first, JSONBuddy wholly and thoroughly supports log files presented in JSON format and unsurprisingly so. Asides from being readily readable in your JSON editor, a trait not so many other log formats can boast of having, the JSON data format shines outstandingly in that it presents data in a reasonably compact and heavily structured form.
What this means is that your log files gains attributes typically associated with big data – it is layered as you would find in traditional database architectures and finely structured to make querying, analytics, or troubleshooting less of a hassle than it normally is.
So back to John now. His issue was essentially down to the fact that JSONBuddy was having a hard time recognizing the log file he was browsing in the JSON editor. And that’s because JSON supports an increasingly wide array of data structures including but not limited to Objects, Arrays, Strings, and Values. Each data structure has its peculiarities and as such, is handled differently by the JSONBuddy editor.
Convert a sequence of JSON objects into a valid array
To make headway, all John had to do was point JSONBuddy to the data structure inherent in the NLog derived log file. In his case, the log files was a sequence of JSON objects, and that meant using the “Surround with JSON array” command is the thing to do. One click and voila, JSONBuddy came to terms with the input before proceeding to accurately render it in the JSON editor.
The command will format the current selection or the whole document if no selection is set. You will get a well-formed JSON array afterward in the editor window and you can pretty-print it using Ctrl-Shift-p. Moreover, you can also open the log in the Grid window.
I simply sent John a message explaining those steps, and a few minutes later, I got an affirmative “Thank you” as a reply. One more happy client!
Maybe, you often have to deal with JSON data which is not formatted as you like or has no white space at all. As an example, it is hard to edit this JSON text in the editor:
JSON data with no white-space
What you need is an editor that a) understands the JSON syntax and b) can quickly format your JSON data hassle-free.
Format JSON data with no white space in the editor
In JSONBuddy, just use the pretty-print feature to format the current text content at any time. The keyboard shortcut for the pretty-print command is Ctrl+Shift+p (you can change the shortcut in the “Options…” dialog). There is also a menu item at “JSON | Pretty-print JSON”. After the formatting the JSON data is much more readable and can be easily modified in the editor:
Note that short array content is aligned at a single line (available with JSONBuddy 5). This makes the JSON more compact and is saving space in the editor window. This is also true for arrays with only primitive types and having no long string values. As a consequence, arrays with many items of only primitive types, often numbers, are still displayed in a compact way with no new-lines separating the single items. In contrast, arrays with long string values are displayed with each item on a new line to increase readability. The editor applies an adaptive JSON formatting based on the actual content.
Use pretty-print in combination with the navigation history
The pretty-print functionality is getting even more powerful in combination with the navigation history of the JSON editor. If you format your JSON data while you are adding new properties, objects or arrays, the navigation history sets the text selection to the current property, after you applied the formatting operation.
You can also use the “Navigate Backward Ctrl+Shift+,” and “Navigate Forward Ctrl+Shift+.” commands to navigate through the selection history as you need.
What do you do if you need to compact a JSON document but the file has more than 400 MB and 20 Million lines? Or the other way around, you have a large document and it is impossible to read because it has no formatting? So you need a JSON editor which can do two things for you. The editor can open and view really large text files and it needs to know how to format or compact your JSON data. Luckily, JSONBuddy can do both for you.
Select your large JSON data
Simply select your large JSON document in the built-in File Explorer window. This is important to avoid loading the file into the editor and to keep a constant memory footprint for really huge JSON documents. You can also select multiple files if you need to do this for several documents:
Remove whitespace from big JSON data
Remove whitespace from your large JSON documents
Run either the “Pretty-print JSON” or “Remove whitespace from JSON” command from the JSON menu. JSONBuddy will save the output document next to the original JSON with a new file name. You will still have the original content as before on your disk.
Of course, you can also run both commands on the current document in the JSON editor.
