JSON formatting and minification

Pretty-print when you need to read a payload. Minify when you ship it. Both are the same document. This page covers the tradeoff and the buttons in HiJSON.

What formatting does

Formatting (pretty-print) inserts indentation and line breaks so nesting is visible. API responses often arrive as one line. That is legal JSON and miserable to read by eye.

{
  "name": "HiJSON",
  "version": "1.0",
  "features": ["format", "minify", "tree"]
}

The minified form {"name":"HiJSON","version":"1.0","features":["format","minify","tree"]} is equivalent.

What minification does

Minify strips insignificant whitespace. Use it for request bodies, logs you store at volume, or embedding JSON in a bundle. Do not minify files you expect to diff in Git unless the team agreed on that.

When to do which

Situation	Prefer
Debugging an API response	Format
Reviewing a config in a PR	Format
Production HTTP body	Minify
Git history you want to read	Format

In HiJSON

Paste JSON or drop a file on the home page.
Format adds 2-space indent in the editor.
Minify collapses it to one line.
Parse (Ctrl+Enter) builds the tree. The detail panel can copy formatted or minified text for a node.

Syntax has to be valid first

Format will not save an illegal document. Trailing commas, single quotes, and comments are the usual failures. See syntax errors.