NeatJSON

A flexible formatter for JSON with a large number of configuration options.

demo of formatting the document a couple ways

Features

Reformat an entire document, or just a selection of JSON/JSONC/JSON5
Save sets of formatting options and easily switch between them. For example:
- One setting to make file sizes as small as possible, reducing float precision.
- Another setting to make it easy to read, sorting object keys and aligning values.
- One setting for inline documentation, wrapping to only 60 characters wide.
Visit http://phrogz.net/JS/NeatJSON/ for a live example of the formatting options available.

Available Commands

NeatJSON: Format Document — Reformats the entire document using the current formatting settings. Only available if the document format is JSON/JSONC/JSON5.
NeatJSON: Format Selection — Reformats the selected text as JSON, using the current formatting settings.
NeatJSON: Format With… — Format the current document or selection, picking a different predefined formatting setting to use. The new formatting settings will be used for all future commands (until this command is invoked again).

Formatting Settings

settings screenshot

The "Default Formatting" settings group provides control over what formatting is applied by default, when no other predefined formatting settings have been selected. Each of the 22 options has an explanation describing its use. If the descriptions are not clear, perhaps try the online version of NeatJSON and play with the options there on some sample data.

You can also create your own custom named formatters:

demo of custom formatters on selections

To create your own named presets, find the "Neat JSON: Formatters" setting in the "Named Formatters" section of the settings and click on "Edit in settings.json".

By default your settings will be populated with the example named formatters that ship with the extension. You can add your own predefined settings to this object. See the options described here for details on the settings you can use.

If you do not want some of the predefined names and delete them, they will still show up due to the way VS Code's settings work (merging defaults with your overrides). To remove the predefined settings, you must set them to have the key/value "hide":true. For example, the following will hide all predefined and show only those you add:

"neatJSON.formatters": {
    "Vanilla, 4 spaces"                       : {"hide":true},
    "Vanilla, Tabs"                           : {"hide":true},
    "Short 'n' Wide"                          : {"hide":true},
    "No Whitespace"                           : {"hide":true},
    "Compact (no whitespace, max 3 decimals)" : {"hide":true},
    // your settings here
},

Release Notes

v0.7.1 (2023-Mar-20)

Update README to reflect features added in 0.7.

v0.7 (2023-Mar-17)

Parse JSON5 as the source (unquoted object keys, trailing commas, comments, single-quoted strings, etc.) instead of only accepting JSON.

v0.6.2 (2023-Mar-17)

First published release that actually works. (Oops.)

v0.6.0 (2023-Mar-16)

Supports formatting multiple selections at the same time.

v0.5.0 (2023-Mar-15)

Initial release.

Phrogz