JSON Toolkit

Frequently asked questions

Is my JSON uploaded anywhere?

No. All formatting, validation, minification, and tree exploration happen entirely in your browser — nothing is sent to a server.

Why does it say my JSON is invalid?

The validator reports the exact parse error, usually a missing comma, an unquoted key, or a trailing comma — check the position mentioned in the error message.

Does formatting change the data?

No — formatting and minifying only change whitespace. Key order and values are preserved exactly, unless you enable Sort Keys.

What does the duplicate-key warning mean?

JSON allows the same key to appear more than once in an object, but only the last value survives when it's parsed — the warning shows you exactly which keys are affected so you can fix the source.

What's the difference between Escape and Format?

Format pretty-prints a full JSON document. Escape converts a plain string into the escaped form you'd use to embed it inside a JSON string value or source code — for example turning a literal quote into \".

You might also need

What is the JSON Toolkit?

The JSON Toolkit cleans up messy or minified JSON so it's easy to read, checks that it's syntactically valid, and helps you explore it. Paste any JSON payload — an API response, a config file, a log line — and format it with proper indentation, minify it back down for production, escape or unescape it for embedding in code or config, browse it as a collapsible tree, or inspect duplicate-key and structural statistics.

Use cases

• Debugging an API response by pretty-printing it into a readable structure
• Validating a config file before deploying it
• Minifying JSON to reduce payload size before sending it over the network
• Escaping a JSON string so it can be embedded safely inside another JSON document or source code
• Exploring a deeply nested payload as a collapsible tree instead of scrolling through raw text
• Catching duplicate keys that would otherwise silently overwrite each other when parsed

How to use the JSON Toolkit

1. 1

   Paste your JSON

   Paste or type JSON into the input panel, or load one of the sample payloads.

2. 2

   Choose an action

   Click Format to pretty-print, Minify to compress, Validate to check syntax, or Escape/Unescape to convert a string.

3. 3

   Explore the result

   Switch between the Code, Tree, and Statistics tabs to view the output, browse it structurally, or see key/node/depth counts.

4. 4

   Copy or send it onward

   Use the Copy button (or Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C), or send the output straight to the Base64 Encoder.

Examples

{"name":"Ada","active":true,"roles":["admin","user"]}

{
  "name": "Ada",
  "active": true,
  "roles": [
    "admin",
    "user"
  ]
}

{
  "id": 1,
  "tags": ["a", "b"]
}

{"id":1,"tags":["a","b"]}

He said "hi"
line two

He said \"hi\"\nline two