vanilla-jsoneditor

A web-based tool to view, edit, format, transform, and validate JSON.

Try it out: https://jsoneditoronline.org

This is the vanilla variant of svelte-jsoneditor, which can be used in vanilla JavaScript or frameworks like SolidJS, React, Vue, Angular.

Features

View and edit JSON
Has a low level text editor and high level tree view and table view
Format (beautify) and compact JSON
Sort, query, filter, and transform JSON
Repair JSON
JSON schema validation and pluggable custom validation
Color highlighting, undo/redo, search and replace
Utilities like a color picker and timestamp tag
Handles large JSON documents up to 512 MB

Install

Install using npm:

npm install vanilla-jsoneditor

Remark: for usage in a Svelte project, install and use svelte-jsoneditor instead of vanilla-jsoneditor.

Use

If you have a setup for your project with a bundler (like Vite, Rollup, or Webpack), it is best to use the default ES import:

// for use in a React, Vue, or Angular project
import { createJSONEditor } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor'

If you want to use the library straight in the browser, use the provided standalone ES bundle:

// for use directly in the browser
import { createJSONEditor } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor/standalone.js'

The standalone bundle contains all dependencies of vanilla-jsoneditor, for example lodash-es and Ajv. If you use some of these dependencies in your project too, it means that they will be bundled twice in your web application, leading to a needlessly large application size. In general, it is preferable to use the default import { createJSONEditor } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor' so dependencies can be reused.

Use (Browser example loading the ES module)

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>JSONEditor</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="jsoneditor"></div>

    <script type="module">
      import { createJSONEditor } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor/standalone.js'

      // Or use it through a CDN (not recommended for use in production):
      // import { createJSONEditor } from 'https://unpkg.com/vanilla-jsoneditor/index.js'
      // import { createJSONEditor } from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vanilla-jsoneditor/index.js'

      let content = {
        text: undefined,
        json: {
          greeting: 'Hello World'
        }
      }

      const editor = createJSONEditor({
        target: document.getElementById('jsoneditor'),
        props: {
          content,
          onChange: (updatedContent, previousContent, { contentErrors, patchResult }) => {
            // content is an object { json: JSONData } | { text: string }
            console.log('onChange', { updatedContent, previousContent, contentErrors, patchResult })
            content = updatedContent
          }
        }
      })

      // use methods get, set, update, and onChange to get data in or out of the editor.
      // Use updateProps to update properties.
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Use (React example, including NextJS)

First, create a React component to wrap the vanilla-jsoneditor

Depending on whether you are using JavaScript of TypeScript, create either a JSX or TSX file:

TypeScript

//
// JSONEditorReact.tsx
//
import { useEffect, useRef } from 'react'
import { createJSONEditor, JSONEditorPropsOptional } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor'

const JSONEditorReact: React.FC<JSONEditorPropsOptional> = (props) => {
  const refContainer = useRef<HTMLDivElement>(null)
  const refEditor = useRef<JSONEditor | null>(null)

  useEffect(() => {
    // create editor
    refEditor.current = createJSONEditor({
      target: refContainer.current!,
      props: {}
    })

    return () => {
      // destroy editor
      if (refEditor.current) {
        refEditor.current.destroy()
        refEditor.current = null
      }
    }
  }, [])

  useEffect(() => {
    // update props
    if (refEditor.current) {
      refEditor.current.updateProps(props)
    }
  }, [props])

  return <div ref={refContainer}></div>
}

export default JSONEditorReact

JavaScript

//
// JSONEditorReact.jsx
//
import { useEffect, useRef } from 'react'
import { JSONEditor, JSONEditorPropsOptional } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor'

const JSONEditorReact = (props) => {
  const refContainer = useRef(null)
  const refEditor = useRef(null)

  useEffect(() => {
    // create editor
    refEditor.current = createJSONEditor({
      target: refContainer.current,
      props: {}
    })

    return () => {
      // destroy editor
      if (refEditor.current) {
        refEditor.current.destroy()
        refEditor.current = null
      }
    }
  }, [])

  // update props
  useEffect(() => {
    if (refEditor.current) {
      refEditor.current.updateProps(props)
    }
  }, [props])

  return <div ref={refContainer}></div>
}

export default JSONEditorReact

Import and use the React component

If you are using NextJS, you will need to use a dynamic import to only render the component in the browser (disabling server-side rendering of the wrapper), as shown below in a NextJS TypeScript example.

If you are using React in an conventional non-NextJS browser app, you can import the component using a standard import statement like import JSONEditorReact from '../JSONEditorReact'

//
// demo.tsx for use with NextJS
//
import dynamic from 'next/dynamic'
import { useCallback, useState } from 'react'

//
// In NextJS, when using TypeScript, type definitions
// can be imported from 'vanilla-jsoneditor' using a
// conventional import statement (prefixed with 'type',
// as shown below), but only types can be imported this
// way. When using NextJS, React components and helper
// functions must be imported dynamically using { ssr: false }
// as shown elsewhere in this example.
//
import type { Content, OnChangeStatus } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor'

//
// In NextJS, the JSONEditor component must be wrapped in
// a component that is dynamically in order to turn off
// server-side rendering of the component. This is neccessary
// because the vanilla-jsoneditor code attempts to use
// browser-only JavaScript capabilities not available
// during server-side rendering. Any helper functions
// provided by vanilla-jsoneditor, such as toTextContent,
// must also only be used in dynamically imported,
// ssr: false components when using NextJS.
//
const JSONEditorReact = dynamic(() => import('../JSONEditorReact'), { ssr: false })
const TextContent = dynamic(() => import('../TextContent'), { ssr: false })

const initialContent = {
  hello: 'world',
  count: 1,
  foo: ['bar', 'car']
}

export default function Demo() {
  const [jsonContent, setJsonContent] = useState<Content>({ json: initialContent })
  const handler = useCallback(
    (content: Content, previousContent: Content, status: OnChangeStatus) => {
      setJsonContent(content)
    },
    [jsonContent]
  )

  return (
    <div>
      <JSONEditorReact content={jsonContent} onChange={handler} />
      <TextContent content={jsonContent} />
    </div>
  )
}

//
// TextContent.tsx
//
// (wrapper around toTextContent for use with NextJS)
//
import { Content, toTextContent } from 'vanilla-jsoneditor'

interface IOwnProps {
  content: Content
}
const TextContent = (props: IOwnProps) => {
  const { content } = props

  return (
    <p>
      The contents of the editor, converted to a text string, are: {toTextContent(content).text}
    </p>
  )
}

export default TextContent