JSONX

Command line tool for JSONX to JSON file conversion

1. What is JSONX?

JSONX (JSON eXtended) is the extension for JSON format which allows using trailing commas and comments in JSON format files.

Let's look at example.jsonx file:

# DEVEL configuration:
{
    # Description for "key1"
    "key1": "value1",

    # "key2" is list of [something very important]:
    "key2": [
        "value2.1", # Disable when ...
        # "value2.2", # Enable when ...
        "value2.3", # Trailing comma allows adding anothwer value with only one row change in version diff
    ],
}

2. JSONX command line tool

2.1 Installation

Once you have installed npm, in command line type:

$ npm install -g @spaceboy.cz/jsonx

2.2 Parameters

• -i --inputfile

  Input (source) JSONX file.

• -o --outputfile

  Output (target) JSON file. When not specified, output file name is created automatically (by adding .json as extension to input file name). Eg. test.jsonx to test.json.

• -w --overwite

  Allows overwriting existing output file.

• -r --reformat

  Reformats input JSONX (by parsing JSON and stringyfying it again). Output is indeted with four spaces.

  Recommended argument.

• --reformat2

  Reformats input JSONX (by parsing JSON and stringyfying it again). Output is indeted with two spaces.

• --reformat-tab

  Reformats input JSONX (by parsing JSON and stringyfying it again). Output is indeted with tab.

• --crlf

  CRLF [\r\n] sequence is used for line endings in output file. (Default is LF [\n].)

• -b --blank

  Adds blank line to end of document (required by some systems).

3. Example

Let's try to convert example JSONX file from paragraph 1.

In command line, type

$ jsonx -i example.jsonx

File example.json should appear with this content:

{
    "key1": "value1",
    "key2": [
        "value2.1",
        "value2.2",
        "value2.3"
    ]
}

Type the same command again. On the second try an error message should appear:

$ jsonx -i example.jsonx
Output file already exists (example.json). Run command again with overwrite enabled.

Convert file again with --overwrite (or -w) argument. Now the command should be executed successfully:

$ jsonx -i example.jsonx -w
Converting example.jsonx to example.json.
Done.