jsonian.el - JSON

jsonian.el provides a major mode for editing JSON files of any size. The goal is to be feature complete against json-mode with no external dependencies or file size limits.

To that end, all functionality is guarantied to operate on arbitrarily large JSON files. If you find a feature that works only on small files, or is slower then it should be on large files, please file an issue.

jsonian.el supports standard JSON (.json) and JSON with comments (.jsonc).

Using jsonian

Vanilla emacs

jsonian.el is a single file package, and can be compiled with make build. Just move the compiled jsonian.elc onto your load path.

Doom emacs

If you are using Doom Emacs, you can configure doom to use jsonian with the following snippet.

;;; In ~/.doom.d/packages.el
(package! jsonian :recipe (:host github :repo "iwahbe/jsonian"))
(package! json-mode :disable t)

;;; In ~/.doom.d/config.el
;; To enable jsonian to work with flycheck
(after! (jsonian flycheck) (jsonian-enable-flycheck))
;; To diasable so-long mode overrides
(after! (jsonian so-long) (jsonian-no-so-long-mode))

Vanilla emacs 27+

Clone the repository

mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src/
git clone git@github.com:iwahbe/jsonian.git

Vanilla emacs 27+

Emacs 27+ includes so-long mode which will supplant jsonian-mode if the file has any long lines. To prevent so-long mode from taking over from jsonian-mode, call jsonian-no-so-long-mode after so-long mode has loaded.

Initialize the local package with use-package making it work with so-long

;;; In ~/.emacs.d/init-jsonian-mode.el
(use-package jsonian
  :load-path "~/src/jsonian"
  :ensure nil
  :after so-long
  :custom
  (jsonian-no-so-long-mode))

Vanilla emacs 27+ wrapped in init package

Initialize the local package with use-package making it work with so-long, and also wrap it in an initialization package

;;; In ~/.emacs.d/init.el
(require 'init-jsonian-mode)

Requires that ~/.emacs.d/site-elisp (or whichever directory the package is in) exist and be in the load path

;;; In ~/.emacs.d/site-elisp/init-jsonian-mode.el
;;; Code:

(use-package jsonian
  :load-path "~/src/jsonian"
  :ensure nil
  :after so-long
  :custom
  (jsonian-no-so-long-mode))

(provide 'init-jsonian-mode)

;;; init-jsonian-mode.el ends here

Integration with 3rd Parties

Flycheck

Flycheck integrates directly with json-mode. jsonian provides the convenience function jsonian-enable-flycheck which adds jsonian-mode to all checkers that support json-mode. jsonian-enable-flycheck must run after flycheck has already loaded.

Package Interface

Functions

jsonian-path

Return the JSON path (as a list) of POINT in BUFFER. It is assumed that BUFFER is entirely JSON and that the json is valid from POS to ‘point-min’.

For example:

{
  "foo": [
    {
      "bar": "█"
    },
    {
      "fizz": "buzz"
    }
  ]
}

with pos at █ should yield "[foo][0][bar]".

‘jsonian-path’ is optimized to work on very large json files (35 MiB+). This optimization is achieved by a. parsing as little of the file as necessary to find the path and b. leveraging C code whenever possible.

By default, this command is bound to C-c C-p.

Customization

jsonian-find needs to filter it's results. By default, it filters by prefix. You can customize the prefix function by setting jsonian-find-filter-fn. Orderless provides an excellent fuzzy search implementation, which you can use via:

(with-eval-after-load 'orderless
    (setq jsonian-find-filter-fn #'orderless-filter))

jsonian-edit-string

Edit the string at point in another buffer. The string is expanded when being edited and collapsed back upon exit. For example, editing the string "json\tescapes\nare\nannoying" will drop you into a buffer containing:

json	escapes
are
annoying

When you return from the buffer, the string is collapsed back into its escaped form (preserving edits).

By default, this command is bound to C-c C-s.

jsonian-find

Provide an interactive completion interface for selecting an element in the buffer. When the element is selected, jump to that point in the buffer.

By default, this command is bound to C-c C-f.

jsonian-format-region

Maximize the JSON contents of the region. This is equivalent to the built-in function json-pretty-print, but much faster (see "## Benchmarks"). For example:

{"key":["simple",null,{"cpx": true},[]]}

Calling jsonian-format-region on the above will transform it into:

{
    "key": [
        "simple",
        null,
        {
            "cpx": true
        },
        []
    ]
}

If a prefix argument is supplied, jsonian-format-region minimizes instead of expanding.

By default, this command is bound to C-c C-w.

jsonian-enclosing-item

Move point to the enclosing node. For example:

[
    { "foo": { "fizz": 3, "buzz": 5 } },
    { "bar": { "fizz": 3, "buzz": 5 } }
]

If the point started on the 5, calling jsonian-enclosing-item would move point to the " at the beginning of "foo". Calling it again would move the point to the first { on the second line. Calling it a final time would move the point to the opening [.

By default, this function is bound to C-c C-e.

jsonian-enable-flycheck

Enable jsonian-mode for all checkers where json-mode is enabled.

Benchmarks

The original reason I wrote jsonian is that I needed to read and naviage very large JSON files, and Emacs was slowing me down. To keep jsonian fast, I maintain benchmarks of jsonian doing real world tasks.

font-locking a large buffer

This benchmark opens a very large (42M) JSON file, then forces Emacs to fontify it. It finally moves point to the end of the file and exits.

Package	Mean [s]	Min [s]	Max [s]	Relative
fundamental-mode	1.357 ± 0.007	1.346	1.372	1.00
prog-mode	1.431 ± 0.009	1.419	1.444	1.05 ± 0.01
jsonian-mode	2.315 ± 0.021	2.284	2.347	1.71 ± 0.02
json-mode	3.846 ± 0.062	3.781	3.992	2.83 ± 0.05
javascript-mode	13.638 ± 0.099	13.439	13.816	10.05 ± 0.09

We can use this benchmark to derive how long different parts of the proces take.

• Fundamental mode is the lower limit. This is the time Emacs spends processing the buffer, parsing sexps, etc.

• prog-mode doesn't do much more then fundamental-mode, which makes sense, since it takes about the same amount of time.

• Applying JSON formatting take at most jsonian-mode - prog-mode.

• Parsing a javascript file is much more complicated (and thus expensive) then parsing a JSON file.

Formatting a large buffer

This tests applying formatting to a very large (42M) JSON file that is compressed to remove all whitespace. The formatted files are largely identical.

Package	Mean [s]	Min [s]	Max [s]	Relative
jsonian-format-region	1.015 ± 0.011	1.000	1.034	1.18 ± 0.02
jsonian-format-region (minimize)	0.860 ± 0.007	0.845	0.869	1.00
json-pretty-print-buffer	4.655 ± 0.005	4.650	4.666	5.42 ± 0.04
json-pretty-print-buffer (minimize)	4.466 ± 0.020	4.437	4.502	5.20 ± 0.05

We see that the built-in json-pretty-print-buffer takes significantly longer then jsonian-format-region, regardless of whether we are pretty printing or minimizing.

Notes:

1. Both jsonian and json-mode were byte-compiled for the font-lock benchmark.
2. Tests were run against GNU Emacs 30.0.50.
3. These benchmarks were taken on an Apple M2 Max with 64GB running macOS Ventura.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, both in the form of new Issues and PRs. Code contributors agree that their contribution falls under the LICENSE.

Package Status

I use jsonian-mode every day, and it works perfectly for my needs. I'm not aware of any bugs at this time, nor do I think any important features are missing. Because of this, I'm not actively adding new code to the project. The project is not abandon, and I'm happy to address bugs or consider new feature requests.