How can I beautify JSON programmatically? [duplicate]

Question

Do you know of any "JSON Beautifier" for JavaScript?

From

{"name":"Steve","surname":"Jobs","company":"Apple"}

To

{
  "name" : "Steve",
  "surname" : "Jobs",
  "company" : "Apple"
}

Example

some_magic(jsonObj); // return beautified JSON

Nephrectomy

Why do you need to beautify it programmatically? Is it being displayed on a web page? – Stephenson

I'm rather amused to see so many "solutions" referenced in the answers, all solving a problem that is, per Andy E's answer, already catered for by the standard API. A lesson to us all: read the documentation of existing APIs before either seeking or implementing a solution to a requirement ;-) – Cortezcortical

Answer 1

Programmatic formatting solution:

The JSON.stringify method supported by many modern browsers (including IE8) can output a beautified JSON string:

JSON.stringify(jsObj, null, "\t"); // stringify with tabs inserted at each level
JSON.stringify(jsObj, null, 4);    // stringify with 4 spaces at each level

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/AndyE/HZPVL/

This method is also included with json2.js, for supporting older browsers.

Manual formatting solution

If you don't need to do it programmatically, Try JSON Lint. Not only will it prettify your JSON, it will validate it at the same time.

Rosaniline

Awesome...thanks! (It might be worth adding that white-space:pre in the css is needed as well) – Shadrach

on html page, wrap your output in <pre></pre> tags – Buchanan

I use JSON.stringify and toastr to output for debugging. Live Example – Wallis

Knew about null, 2, but didn't know that '\t' would work too. Fantastic! – Moleskin

I find jsonlint.com a little cumbersome. A MUCH quicker workflow is kadebom.com/jsonlint.html IMO – Circumscissile

@Circumscissile cumbersome? Literally copy, paste, click... – Contempt

JSON.stringify does fairly horrible job on lists with lots of numbers, the npm package beautify-json (npm.io/package/beautify-json) does that better. – Diatropism

question was about json string as an input NOT object, so proper would be ` JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(jsonString),null,2); ` – Savaii