JSON & XML Toolkit
A complete data workbench for JSON and XML inside VS Code. Most extensions do one thing — format, or flatten, or convert. This one bundles the whole toolbox a developer or data analyst reaches for every day, plus an interactive Workbench panel you won't find elsewhere.
Why this one?
- 100% offline & private — every operation runs locally in memory. The extension makes no network requests and sends no telemetry; your data never leaves your machine. See Privacy.
- One extension, the full toolkit — 35+ operations for JSON and XML, instead of installing five single-purpose extensions.
- Interactive Workbench (
Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+J) — a two-pane scratchpad with live format auto-detection. Paste, transform, query, and pipe the output straight back into your editor or a new document. No round-tripping through a website.
- Structure tree — an expandable outline of the active JSON document in the Explorer; click any node to jump to it. Lazy, so it stays fast on big files.
- Schema validation & semantic diff — validate against any JSON Schema with inline error markers, and diff two documents after normalizing formatting and key order so only real changes show.
- Works on a selection or the whole file — every command transforms the selected text, or the entire document if nothing is selected.
- Lenient by default — comments, trailing commas, single quotes and unquoted keys are accepted (JSON5) so messy real-world data just works.
- Live status bar — validity, size, depth and key/element counts for the active JSON/XML file at a glance.
Features
JSON
| Command |
What it does |
| Prettify / Minify |
Format with configurable indent, or compact to one line |
| Sort Keys |
Recursively sort object keys (asc/desc) |
| Repair / Fix |
Parse JSON5-style input and emit clean, valid JSON |
| Escape / Unescape String |
Convert to/from a JSON string literal |
| Stringify / Parse |
Wrap a document as a string value, or unwrap one |
| Flatten / Unflatten |
Convert between nested and dot/bracket-notation form |
| Remove Null & Empty |
Strip null, "", [], {} recursively |
| Escape / Decode Unicode |
Convert non-ASCII to \uXXXX and back |
| Query (JSONPath) |
Run a JSONPath expression and collect matches |
| Validate against Schema |
Check the document against a JSON Schema, with inline error markers |
| Analyze |
Depth, key counts, type breakdown, byte size |
XML
| Command |
What it does |
| Prettify / Minify |
Format with configurable indent, or compact to one line |
| Escape / Unescape |
Convert to/from XML entities (<, &, …) |
| Query (XPath) |
Run an XPath expression and collect matching nodes |
| Analyze |
Elements, attributes, depth, and unique-tag counts |
Convert
| Command |
What it does |
| JSON → YAML / YAML → JSON |
Round-trip between JSON and YAML |
| JSON → XML / XML → JSON |
Round-trip between JSON and XML |
| JSON → CSV / CSV → JSON |
Tabular round-trip with proper quoting and type coercion |
| JSON → TypeScript |
Generate interface definitions from a sample |
| JSON → Go struct |
Generate Go structs with json: tags |
| JSON → Protobuf |
Generate proto3 message definitions |
| JSON → Python dataclass |
Generate @dataclass classes with type hints |
Inspect
| Command |
What it does |
| Diff (Semantic) |
Compare the active document with another file; both sides are normalized (sorted keys, consistent formatting) first, so only meaningful differences show |
| JSON Structure tree |
An expandable outline in the Explorer for JSON files; click a node to reveal it in the editor (lazy, so it stays fast on large files) |
| Status bar |
Live validity, size, depth and key/element counts for the active JSON/XML file |
Usage
- Command Palette (
Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P) → type JSON & XML Toolkit to see every command.
- Right-click in a JSON/XML/YAML file → JSON & XML Toolkit submenu for the common ones.
- Workbench panel →
Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+J, or right-click → Send Selection to Toolkit Workbench.
In-place transforms (prettify, minify, sort, escape, repair…) rewrite the selection. Conversions and queries open the result in a fresh editor so your source stays intact.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
jsonXmlToolkit.indent |
2 |
Indentation for prettified output (2, 4, or tab). |
jsonXmlToolkit.sortDirection |
asc |
Direction for Sort Keys. |
jsonXmlToolkit.statusBar.enabled |
true |
Show the live status-bar info item. |
jsonXmlToolkit.repair.useJson5 |
true |
Accept JSON5 syntax when repairing. |
Privacy
Your data never leaves your machine. Every transformation, query, conversion and validation runs entirely in-process, on your local device.
- 🔌 No network access — the extension contains no
fetch, XMLHttpRequest, WebSocket, or http/https/net/dns calls. It works fully offline (airplane mode, air-gapped machines).
- 🔒 No telemetry, no tracking — nothing about your documents or usage is collected or sent anywhere.
- 🧱 Locked-down panel — the Workbench webview runs under a strict Content-Security-Policy (
default-src 'none') that blocks any outbound connection at the browser level.
- 📄 Schema validation stays local — schemas are read from your own files and compiled synchronously; remote
$refs are never fetched (validation fails closed instead of reaching out).
The only addresses you may spot inside the bundle are identifier strings (e.g. JSON Schema $ids and XML namespace URIs) that are never contacted.
Note: VS Code's own telemetry is separate and controlled by your telemetry.telemetryLevel setting — this extension adds nothing to it.
Building from source
npm install
npm run build # bundles the extension to dist/
npm test # runs the core unit tests
npm run package # produces a .vsix
Publishing: set publisher in package.json to your Marketplace publisher id, then vsce publish.
License
MIT © contributors
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