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Formatting a JSONL (JSON Lines) file #191
Description
I'm starting to work a lot with JSONL files (JSON Lines).
I know that the idea behind a JSONL file is that each line in the file is a separate JSON "object", but that makes it very hard to read. I know that I can Format or Compress each line individually, but it would be great if I could Format the whole document to read it and then Compress the whole document again to use it.
Activity
molsonkiko commentedon Sep 1, 2024
FWIW JsonTools has had support for JSON Lines documents for some time. The tree view works with JSON Lines; no need to reformat them first.
@SinghRajenM
If you're curious how I implemented the JSON Lines parser, the source code is here.
SinghRajenM commentedon Sep 7, 2024
@molsonkiko thanks for the info.
Currently, this plugin uses rapidjson under the hood to parse json. I am exploring some other options as rapidjson's sax parser does provide line/position information. I am trying to figure some existing parser instead of write owner custom parser.
WolfgangHG commentedon Aug 13, 2026
Just an idea: would it make sense to convert the JSONL to "real" json, which can be easily formatted?
This would mean adding square brackets around the file content, and adding a comma at the end of each line:
Original json:
{"prop1":"value1.1","prop2":"value2.1"} {"prop1":"value1.2","prop2":"value2.2"}Converted json:
[ { "prop1": "value1.1", "prop2": "value2.1" }, { "prop1": "value1.2", "prop2": "value2.2" } ]A menu item "convert JSONL to JSON" could do this.
sapph42 commentedon Sep 30, 2026
I have added a PR for this. #256