README

The json_pp utility prints JSON data in a legible, indented format. It provides the most benefit to people who need to read, inspect, and understand JSON data structures that are not already provided with separating white space, such as software developers building or consuming JSON-based APIs.

By default, json_pp does not escape slashes or multi-byte Unicode characters. These characters may be escaped by overriding the default encode options with a configuration file. Pretty-printing may be similarly disabled when compact JSON is needed and the source JSON is already formatted with white space.

System Requirements

• PHP 5.5.0 or later must be available at the command line in order to run json_pp. Users of older versions of PHP should seriously consider upgrading. PHP 7 or later is required to run the test suite.
• Composer is used for automating installation, and it is also possible to manually download and install this package.

Installation

To make json_pp available to all system users, which may require system administrator (e.g., root) privileges:

composer global install deftek/json_pp

To make json_pp available only for the current system user:

composer install deftek/json_pp

To include json_pp in a project that uses Composer:

composer require deftek/json_pp

To include json_pp for development purposes in a project that uses Composer:

composer require --dev deftek/json_pp

Usage

Pretty-print compact JSON contained in a string

echo '{"foo":{"bar":"baz"}}' | json_pp

Output:

{
    "foo": {
        "bar": "baz"
    }
}

Pretty-print compact JSON contained in a file:

json_pp < compact.json

Output compact JSON from pretty-printed source:

echo pretty.json | json_pp --config=config.compact.php

Where config.compact.php contains something like:

<?php
return [
    'decode' => 0,
    'depth'  => 512,
    'encode' => JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES | JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE,
];

Configuration

See config.default.php for the default configuration values, and override the values in your own configuration files as needed.

The configuration file contains three options that are used for controlling arguments to the json_decode() and json_encode() function calls:

1. decode: This value represents the options argument for json_decode().
2. depth: This value represents the depth argument for both json_decode() and json_encode().
3. encode: This value represents the options argument for json_encode().

Copyright and License

The json_pp package is provided under the 3-Clause (aka New or Modified) BSD License. Complete copyright and license information is available in LICENSE.txt.

Issues and Contributing

Issues may be reported and contributions may be accepted within the contribution guidelines.

Change Log

Notable changes to json_pp are documented in the change log.