Pretty Print JSON: All Methods Explained

What Is Pretty Printing?

Pretty printing adds indentation and line breaks to minified JSON, making it human-readable.

JavaScript: JSON.stringify

const obj = { name: 'Alice', address: { city: 'NYC' } };

// 2-space indent (most common)
console.log(JSON.stringify(obj, null, 2));

// Tab indent
console.log(JSON.stringify(obj, null, '\t'));

JavaScript: Selective Fields with Replacer

const user = { id: 1, name: 'Alice', password: 'secret', email: 'a@b.com' };
console.log(JSON.stringify(user, ['id', 'name', 'email'], 2));

Python: json.dumps

import json
data = {"name": "Alice", "scores": [95, 87, 91]}
pretty = json.dumps(data, indent=2, sort_keys=True)
print(pretty)

Terminal / Command Line

# Using Python
echo '{"name":"Alice"}' | python3 -m json.tool

# Using jq
cat data.json | jq .

# jq with filter
curl -s https://api.example.com/user | jq '.name, .email'

Sorting Keys

# Python
json.dumps(data, indent=2, sort_keys=True)

# jq
cat data.json | jq -S .

FAQ