Pretty print JSON using the command line tools

#ubuntu #python

Option 1. Using python
cat FileName.json | python -m json.tool

Option 2. Colors and multiple options.
cat FileName.json~ | jq ''

Option 3. Pretty print with syntax highlighting.
echo '{"foo": "bar"}' | python -m json.tool | pygmentize -g

Top comments (5)

Andy Piper • Jul 11 '19

Note, option 2 is fine, but no good if you are dealing with long integers (more than 53 bit) as JavaScript mangles the numbers.

Tom Butterwith • Jul 11 '19

Could you elaborate a little further? jq is built in C

Andy Piper • Jul 14 '19

Sure. Let's assume the following small JSON:

{
  "id": 1130950371172638721,
  "id_str": "1130950371172638721"
}

(hint, these are values from a Tweet object in the Twitter API)

Now, let's parse this with jq:

$ jq < simple.json
{
  "id": 1130950371172638700,
  "id_str": "1130950371172638721"
}

The large integer value is mangled, because JavaScript (jQuery) does not like values larger than 53 bits. This is the reason that Twitter ended up serving IDs as both integer values and as strings (read more here)

Tom Butterwith • Jul 15 '19

Well every day is a learning day. I didn't know C had the same issues as JS with integer parsing.

Thanks for clarifying.

Andy Piper • Jul 16 '19

I guess this issue is relevant here:

github.com/stedolan/jq/issues/369

DEV Community

Pretty print JSON using the command line tools

Top comments (5)

Read next

Setting Up an Ubuntu Dev Environment with Multipass and VS Code Remote-SSH

Understanding the ETL Process with Real-Time Data: Extraction, Transformation, Loading, and Visualization

Django AI Assistant for VS Code

AI: The Future of Housing, from Smart Homes to Smart Cities