🩺 json-doctor

Validate, inspect and fix JSON — from the terminal, instantly.

validate · pretty / minify · stats · dot-path queries

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✨ Features

• ✅ Validation with location — --explain shows the exact line and column of syntax errors
• 💅 Pretty / minify — 2-space reformat or whitespace-strip in one pass
• 📊 Structural stats — key counts, max depth, type histogram, entropy for your JSON
• 🔎 Dot-path queries — users.0.name, array indexes included
• 🪶 Pure stdlib — zero dependencies, single ~2 MB binary
• 🔁 Unix-friendly — reads stdin or file, pipes anywhere

🚀 Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/v01dst/json-doctor
cd json-doctor
go build -o json-doctor .

Or with Docker:

docker build -t json-doctor .
docker run --rm -i json-doctor --pretty < data.json

📖 Usage

json-doctor [flags] [file.json]     (stdin if no file)

  --pretty     reformat with 2-space indent
  --minify     strip all whitespace
  --stats      structural statistics
  -q PATH      dot-path query (users.0.name)
  --explain    on error, print line/column
  --version    print version

Examples

$ echo '{"name":"ada","langs":["go","py"]}' | json-doctor --pretty
{
  "name": "ada",
  "langs": [
    "go",
    "py"
  ]
}

$ echo '{"broken": tru}' | json-doctor --explain
error: invalid character '}' in literal true (expecting 'e') (line 1, column 16)

$ json-doctor -q users.0.email data.json
"ada@example.com"

$ json-doctor --stats big.json
{
  "keys": 3,
  "maxDepth": 4,
  "arrays": 1,
  ...
}

Exit code	Meaning
0	Success
1	Invalid JSON / bad query

🧱 Tech Stack

Layer	Tech
Language	Go 1.27 (stdlib only)
Testing	go test
Packaging	Docker (multi-stage)
CI	GitHub Actions

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Built with ⚡ by v01dst