Pretty JSON Reduces Errors and Fatigue

Published 2021-02-23.
Time to read: 1 minutes.

This page is part of the posts collection, categorized under JSON, Ubuntu.

I've been using jq to format my JSON for years. It is easy to format a JSON document, just pass it through jq without any options or arguments. Notice, however, that a lot of vertical space is wasted using this formatting:

Shell

$ jq < blog/colors.json
{
  "colors": [
    {
      "color": "black",
      "hex": "#000",
      "rgb": [
        0,
        0,
        0
      ]
    },
    {
      "color": "red",
      "hex": "#f00",
      "rgb": [
        255,
        0,
        0
      ]
    },
    {
      "color": "yellow",
      "hex": "#ff0",
      "rgb": [
        255,
        255,
        0
      ]
    },
    {
      "color": "green",
      "hex": "#0f0",
      "rgb": [
        0,
        255,
        0
      ]
    },
    {
      "color": "cyan",
      "hex": "#0ff",
      "rgb": [
        0,
        255,
        255
      ]
    },
    {
      "color": "blue",
      "hex": "#00f",
      "rgb": [
        0,
        0,
        255
      ]
    },
    {
      "color": "magenta",
      "hex": "#f0f",
      "rgb": [
        255,
        0,
        255
      ]
    },
    {
      "color": "white",
      "hex": "#fff",
      "rgb": [
        255,
        255,
        255
      ]
    }
  ]
}

After reading The Pretty JSON Revolution I decided to try the program the article mentioned, oj. oj is a Go program. Here is how I compiled it on Ubuntu:

Shell

$ sudo apt install golang-go

$ go get github.com/ohler55/ojg

$ go get github.com/ohler55/ojg/cmd/oj

By default, compiled go projects are placed in the ~/go/bin/ directory. Here is how I added that directory the the PATH, and made an alias for invoking the program with the proper options for maximum prettiness:

Shell

$ echo "$HOME/go/bin/:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

$ echo "alias pprint='oj -i 2 -s -p 80.3'" >> ~/.bash_aliases

$ source ~/.bashrc

Pretty-printing the JSON in colors.json with oj is easy:

Shell

$ pprint colors.json
{
  "colors": [
    {"color": "black", "hex": "#000", "rgb": [0, 0, 0]},
    {"color": "red", "hex": "#f00", "rgb": [255, 0, 0]},
    {"color": "yellow", "hex": "#ff0", "rgb": [255, 255, 0]},
    {"color": "green", "hex": "#0f0", "rgb": [0, 255, 0]},
    {"color": "cyan", "hex": "#0ff", "rgb": [0, 255, 255]},
    {"color": "blue", "hex": "#00f", "rgb": [0, 0, 255]},
    {"color": "magenta", "hex": "#f0f", "rgb": [255, 0, 255]},
    {"color": "white", "hex": "#fff", "rgb": [255, 255, 255]}
  ]
}

I like it!

Give it to Mikey. He won't eat it. He hates everything!

I will continue to use jq for queries, but I'll use oj for pretty-printing from now on.