Human Readable JSON: aka Add spaces and breaks to json dump - php

Question

Is there a "simple" script somewhere that will take a json data and format it to make it more readable?
For example:
// $response is a json encoded string.
var_dump($response);
The above outputs everything on one line. I'd like for it to be indented and spaced to make it easier to read.

Answer 1

Note that var_dump and its terser cousin var_export do print newlines.
Bear in mind that newlines are not shown in HTML document by default. In an HTML context, you want this instead:
echo '<div style="font-family: monospace; white-space:pre;">';
echo htmlspecialchars(var_export($response));
echo '</div>';
In php 5.4+, you can simply use the PRETTY_PRINT flag of json_encode:
echo json_encode($response, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
Again, in an HTML context, you'll have to wrap it as described above.

Answer 2

Paste it into JSONLint.com and click validate.

Answer 3

Had a similar problem, in that I was posting a serialised javascript object to a php script and wished to save it to the server in a human-readable format.
Found this post on the webdeveloper.com forum and tweaked the code very slightly to suit my own sensibilities (it takes a json encoded string):
function jsonToReadable($json){
$tc = 0; //tab count
$r = ''; //result
$q = false; //quotes
$t = "\t"; //tab
$nl = "\n"; //new line
for($i=0;$i<strlen($json);$i++){
$c = $json[$i];
if($c=='"' && $json[$i-1]!='\\') $q = !$q;
if($q){
$r .= $c;
continue;
}
switch($c){
case '{':
case '[':
$r .= $c . $nl . str_repeat($t, ++$tc);
break;
case '}':
case ']':
$r .= $nl . str_repeat($t, --$tc) . $c;
break;
case ',':
$r .= $c;
if($json[$i+1]!='{' && $json[$i+1]!='[') $r .= $nl . str_repeat($t, $tc);
break;
case ':':
$r .= $c . ' ';
break;
default:
$r .= $c;
}
}
return $r;
}
passing in
{"object":{"array":["one","two"],"sub-object":{"one":"string","two":2}}}
returns
{
"object": {
"array": [
"one",
"two"
],
"sub-object": {
"one": "string",
"two": 2
}
}
}

Answer 4

json_encode($response, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
It's 2017 and I think this should be the answer for anyone on a modern version of PHP.
Note that lots of options exist for how to encode the JSON string to your liking. From php.net:
JSON_HEX_QUOT, JSON_HEX_TAG, JSON_HEX_AMP, JSON_HEX_APOS, JSON_NUMERIC_CHECK, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT, JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES, JSON_FORCE_OBJECT, JSON_PRESERVE_ZERO_FRACTION, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE, JSON_PARTIAL_OUTPUT_ON_ERROR

Answer 5

echo '<pre>';
print_r(json_decode($response));
echo '</pre>';
Too simple?

Answer 6

Pipe it through python -mjson.tool.

Answer 7

The suggestion of using python worked well for me. Here's some code to use this from PHP:
function jsonEncode( $data, $pretty = false ) {
$str = json_encode($data);
if( $pretty ) {
$descriptorSpec = array(
0 => array('pipe', 'r'), // stdin is a pipe that the child will read from
1 => array('pipe', 'w'), // stdout is a pipe that the child will write to
);
$fp = proc_open('/usr/bin/python -mjson.tool', $descriptorSpec, $pipes);
fputs($pipes[0], $str);
fclose($pipes[0]);
$str = '';
while( !feof($pipes[1]) ) {
$str .= $chunk = fgets($pipes[1], 1024);
}
fclose($pipes[1]);
}
return $str;
}