Display formatted JSON via command line.

10 June 2018 - less than 1 min read time
Tags: json cli python3 jq

Here are a few ways to display JSON in readable format via command line as an alternative to using JSONlint.com or similar online tools.

Using Python 2

Pipe to:
python -m json.tool

Add to .bashprofile:
alias jpp='python -m json.tool'

Using Python 3

Pipe to:
python3 -c "import json; import sys; print(json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), indent=4))"

Add to .bashprofile:
alias jpp='python3 -c "import json; import sys; print(json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), indent=4))"'

Using jq

“jq is like sed for JSON data - you can use it to slice and filter and map and transform structured data with the same ease that sed, awk, grep and friends let you play with text.” ~ per jq’s homepage.

Install:
user@osx$ brew install jq

Pipe to:
jq