Home

jvim

A vim-style JSON editor built with Textual.

jvim brings the efficiency of vim keybindings to JSON editing in your terminal. It provides syntax highlighting, real-time validation, JSONPath search, embedded JSON editing, and a powerful diff viewer — all in a lightweight TUI.

Screenshots

Editor

Diff Viewer

Features

• Vim-style modal editing — Normal, Insert, Command, and Search modes
• Syntax highlighting — JSON-aware colorization
• JSON validation — Real-time validation with error reporting
• JSONPath search — Search using JSONPath expressions with value filtering
• JSONL support — Edit JSON Lines files with smart formatting and record navigation
• Embedded JSON editing — Edit JSON strings within JSON with nested level support
• Visual mode — Character-wise (v) and line-wise (V) selection with d/y/c operators
• Folding — Collapse/expand JSON blocks and long string values (60+ chars)
• Bracket matching — Jump to matching brackets with %
• Undo/Redo — Full undo history with dot-repeat (.)
• Substitute — Vim-style :s/old/new/g with regex, range, JSONPath, and flags support
• Multi-file navigation — Open multiple files and switch with :n, :N, :e#
• Diff viewer — Side-by-side JSON comparison with scroll/fold/cursor sync
• Full keybindings reference

Installation

pip install jvim

Quick Start

# Open a file
jvim data.json

# Open multiple files
jvim a.json b.json c.json

# Open in read-only mode
jvim -R data.json

# Create new file
jvim newfile.json

# Compare two JSON files
jvimdiff file1.json file2.json

Also available as jvi and jv shortcuts. The diff viewer is also available as jvd.

Modes

Mode	Description	Enter	Exit
Normal	Navigation and commands	Esc	—
Insert	Text editing	i, a, o, etc.	Esc
Command	Ex commands	:	Enter or Esc
Search	Find text/JSONPath	/ or ?	Enter or Esc
Visual	Selection	v or V	Esc, d, y, c

Wiki Pages

Page	Description
JSONL Support	JSON Lines handling, record navigation, floating header
JSONPath Search	JSONPath expressions, value filtering, smartcase, modifiers
Embedded JSON Editing	Editing nested JSON strings with multi-level stack
Substitute	Find-and-replace with regex, JSONPath, and JSONL support
Diff Viewer	Side-by-side comparison, hunk navigation, EJ diff
Keybindings	Complete keybinding reference for all modes

---

한국어