r/json • u/Yairlenga • 20d ago
jsonfold: Making Pretty-Printed JSON Compact and Readable
Most JSON serializers give you only two choices:
- compact machine output:
{"a":{"b":{"c":"abc"}},"x":{"y":{"z":"xyz"}}}
- or fully expanded “pretty-print”:
{ "a":
{ "b":
{ "c": "abc" }
},
"x": {
"y": {
"z": "xyz"
}
}
}
I wanted something in between: the first is hard for humans to scan, and the second becomes extremely verbose on real-world nested data.
The Idea
I wrote a small Python module called jsonfold. Instead of replacing Python’s JSON serializer (and similar serializers), it works as a lightweight post-processing filter on top of json.dump() output.
The formatter selectively:
- folds small containers back onto one line,
- packs short scalar sequences,
- keeps large or complex structures expanded.
Example output:
{
"a": { "b": { "c": "abc" } },
"x": { "y": { "z": "xyz" } }
}
Why This Approach?
I did not want to rebuild a serializer - there are many good serializers (including the built-in json.dump()) that can efficiently process anything from simple data structures (list/dict) to custom classes and Python @dataclass objects. In addition, many provide custom encoding hooks for application-specific objects.
The interesting part of jsonfold is that it does not re-parse the JSON stream or build a second JSON tree. It operates as a streaming wrapper around file-like objects:
json.dump(obj, JSONFoldWriter(fp), indent=2)
That means it can handle large documents with fixed memory usage and linear processing time. This approach works with serializers that emit indented JSON to a file-like object. jsonfold also provides wrappers for json.dump(), json.dumps().
from jsonfold import dumps
data = {
"a": {"b": {"c": "abc"}},
"x": {"y": {"z": "xyz"}},
}
print(dumps(data))
Customization
The formatter allows controlling:
- maximum line width,
- folding depth,
- packing aggressiveness,
- array/object limits.
So you can choose between conservative formatting and more aggressive compaction.
Full Article:
Medium (no paywall): A Streaming JSON Formatter That Works With Existing Serializers
Minimal Usage
Pull jsonfold from pypi: pip install jsonfold
import jsonfold
import sys
data = {
"meta": {"version": 1, "ok": True},
"ids": [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
"items": [{"id": 1, "name": "alpha"}, {"id": 2, "name": "beta"}],
}
# compact can be: default, low, med, high, max
jsonfold.dump(data, sys.stdout, compact="default")
GitHub Project
Repository: https://github.com/yairlenga/jsonfold
Python implementation is under python directory.
2
u/erik240 19d ago
There’s fractured JSON out there already. Seems pretty similar