json-term 🌳

High-fidelity interactive terminal JSON viewer, collapsible tree explorer, type syntax highlighter, and structural diff tool across macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Never drown in unformatted 5,000-line JSON outputs or fight with false-positive line diffs again. json-term lets you interactively collapse/expand nested objects, inspect JSONPaths, copy values to your clipboard, and perform key-order independent structural diffs directly inside your terminal.

✨ Features

• 🌳 Interactive Collapsible Tree: Expand and collapse objects/arrays with Enter, Space, or arrow keys (▶ 25 items / ▼).
• 🎨 Type-Aware Syntax Highlighting: Bold cyan keys, green strings, yellow numbers, magenta booleans, and dimmed nulls.
• ⚡ Key-Aware Structural Diffing: Ignores arbitrary key order differences and visually highlights additions (+), removals (-), and mutations (~).
• 🎯 1-Key JSONPath & Value Copying: Hit p to copy the node's JSONPath (data.users[0].address.city) or y to copy its formatted JSON value to the system clipboard.
• 🔎 Interactive Search & Filter (/): Instant fuzzy search across keys and values with automatic matched node expansion.
• 🚰 Pipe-Friendly & CI Mode (--print): Easily pipe curl, kubectl, or docker logs into interactive viewer or non-interactive formatted trees.
• 📦 Zero Native C++ Build Dependencies: Pure JavaScript / TypeScript running anywhere Node.js runs.

🚀 Installation

Global CLI Tool

npm install -g json-term
# or run directly with npx
npx json-term data.json
# or shorthand alias
npx jsonx data.json

In Your Project (Library)

npm install json-term

🛠️ CLI Usage & Examples

1. Interactive Tree Viewer

# View local JSON file
jsonx package.json

# Directly parse inline JSON string
jsonx '{"service": "auth-api", "port": 443, "active": true, "tags": ["prod", "v2"]}'

# View piped API response
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/nodejs/node | jsonx

# Echo / pipe JSON string
echo '{"status": 200, "data": [1, 2, 3]}' | jsonx

2. Structural JSON Diffing

# Compare two JSON configuration files
jsonx diff config.old.json config.new.json

# Diff two direct inline JSON strings
jsonx diff '{"port": 8080, "debug": true}' '{"port": 8443, "debug": true, "ssl": true}'

# Diff file against piped stdin
curl -s https://api.com/v2/config | jsonx diff config.v1.json

# Hide unchanged lines in diff
jsonx diff a.json b.json --no-unchanged

3. Simple Colorized JSON View (jq-style with Bold Keys)

# Print syntax-highlighted standard JSON format from file
jsonx --raw data.json

# Print syntax-highlighted direct JSON string
jsonx --raw '{"user": "alice", "roles": ["admin", "developer"]}'

# Piped stream
curl -s https://api.github.com/users/octocat | jsonx --raw

4. Non-Interactive Pretty Tree Print (for scripts & CI)

# Print formatted tree to stdout
jsonx --print data.json

# Pretty print inline JSON string
jsonx --print '{"name": "test", "count": 42}'

# Set initial collapse depth (e.g. depth 2)
jsonx data.json --depth 2 --print

⌨️ Interactive TUI Keybindings

| Key | Action | | :--- | :--- | | ↑ / k | Move cursor up | | ↓ / j | Move cursor down | | Enter / Space / → | Toggle expand / collapse node | | e | Expand all nodes | | c | Collapse all nodes | | p | Copy current node's JSONPath to clipboard (e.g. $.users[0].id) | | y / v | Copy current node's JSON value to clipboard | | / | Interactive search / filter | | Esc | Clear search query | | q / Ctrl+C | Exit viewer |

📖 Programmatic API (TypeScript & JavaScript)

import { 
  buildTree, 
  prettyPrintTree, 
  diffJSON, 
  prettyPrintDiff, 
  calculateDiffStats,
  InteractiveViewer 
} from "json-term";

const data = {
  service: "Gateway",
  port: 8080,
  endpoints: ["/auth", "/users", "/metrics"],
  active: true,
};

// 1. Syntax-Highlighted Standard JSON String
const colored = colorizeJSON(data);
console.log(colored);

// 2. Pretty Print Formatted Tree String
const tree = buildTree(data, "myService", "$", 0, 2);
console.log(prettyPrintTree(tree));

// 3. Compute Structural Diff
const oldConfig = { port: 8080, debug: true };
const newConfig = { port: 8443, debug: true, ssl: true };

const diffTree = diffJSON(oldConfig, newConfig, "configDiff");
const stats = calculateDiffStats(diffTree);
console.log(`Changes: +${stats.added} -${stats.removed} ~${stats.modified}`);
console.log(prettyPrintDiff(diffTree));

// 4. Launch Interactive TUI Programmatically
const viewer = new InteractiveViewer(tree);
await viewer.start();

⚙️ CLI Options Reference

| Option | Shorthand | Default | Description | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | --raw | -r | false | Print standard syntax-highlighted JSON (bold keys & typed colors) | | --format <type> | -F | "tree" | Output format (tree or json) | | --print | -p | false | Non-interactive formatted print to stdout | | --depth <number> | -d | 2 | Initial tree expansion depth | | --search <query> | -s | "" | Initial filter query for keys/values | | --no-unchanged | | false | Hide unchanged nodes in diff output | | --version | -v | | Output version | | --help | -h | | Display help menu |

🧪 Development & Testing

git clone https://github.com/authoritydmc/json-term.git
cd json-term
npm install
npm test
npm run build

🚀 Automated Release & Versioning

1-Click from GitHub Actions

Go to Actions -> Automated Version & Release -> Select patch, minor, or major -> Click Run workflow.

From Terminal

npm run release:patch
npm run release:minor
npm run release:major

📄 License

MIT © 2026 authoritydmc