JSON Color Stream

A stream parser for pretty printing for JSON!

A no-nonsense, low-dependency, streaming API for converting nasty and fragmented JSON strings into beautiful, canonicalized outputs

• Accepts either full JSON strings or serial chunk, following a "parse-as-you-go" paradigm:
  • Large JSON blobs? No problem! The minimal memory overhead has your back!
  • Don't wait for your whole JSON string to come in, let the parser give you the fragments now!
• Fully configurable output format (either from the command line or a configuration file): pick your "canonical form" and make all strings obey!
• Integrated colorization: never let your eyes bleed again!
• Fully asynchronous backend: make the event loop work for you!

Get it today, on npm!

# Add to your library
npm install json-color-stream

# Or, install globally so you can use the CLI
npm install -g json-color-stream

Basic Usage

See the full API for all the gory details, but here's a quick primer:

const { JSONStream } = require("json-color-stream");

// Statically parse
console.log(JSONStream.parse(`{ "a": 1 }`));

let js;

// Handle non-piped input
js = new JSONStream();
js.on("data", (string) => console.log(string));
js.end(`{ "a": 1 }`);

// Handle piped (fragmented) input
js = new JSONStream();
js.on("data", (string) => process.stdout.write(string));
js.write(`{ "a"`);
js.write(`: 1 }`);
js.end();

CLI Usage

If you globally installed the package (or locally, then just use npx jcs), then you can do all this on the command line too!

# Show the help menu
jcs --help

# Format JSON strings
jcs '{"a": 1}'

# Can pipe to stdin too! Just use the "-" argument
curl -s https://api.github.com/users/jonathanvanschenck/repos | jcs -

# Can turn off colors, and quote suppression, so that your eyes can bleed
jcs --colorize-mode 0 --quote-suppression-mode 0 '{"a": 1}'

# Okay, maybe its just that you are piping to a file or your terminal doesn't support joy and beauty,
#  in that case, you might want to make turn on character escaping too:
jcs \
  --colorize-mode 0 \
  --quote-suppression-mode 0 \
  --escape-whitespace 1 \
  --escape-unicode 1 \
  '{"a": 1, ["\n", "\u00f6"]}'

# Or maybe you just want to cannonicalize the output, in which case you can turn everything off:
#  like pretty formats, etc. 
jcs \
  --indent "" \
  --EOL "" \
  --colon ":" \
  --colorize-mode 0 \
  --quote-suppression-mode 0 \
  --escape-whitespace 1 \
  --escape-unicode 1 \
  '{"a": 1, ["\n", "\u00f6"]}'

If you don't like any of the defaults, you can edit them in $HOME/.config/jcs/config.json, which are just the Renderer's constructor options:

Manual Installation

Make sure you have node.js installed on your system

Make sure the index file is executable

chmod +x cli.js

Simulink the index file to some folder in your path, e.g.:

cd /usr/local/bin
ln -s /path/to/cli.js jcs

TODOs

• Add configuration management tools to the cli
• Add some convenient overrides to cli, for things like "--cannonicalize"
• Add non-composite starts for JSON strings?
• Clean up error reporting, for the possibility of error handling
• Allow parser resets
• Add filtering, like some subset of jq?