How can I pretty-print JSON using Go?

Question

Does anyone know of a simple way to pretty-print JSON output in Go?

The stock http://golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/ package does not seem to include functiona

Answer 1

//You can do it with json.MarshalIndent(data, "", "  ")

package main

import(
  "fmt"
  "encoding/json" //Import package
)

//Create struct
type Users struct {
    ID   int
    NAME string
}

//Asign struct
var user []Users
func main() {
 //Append data to variable user
 user = append(user, Users{1, "Saturn Rings"})
 //Use json package the blank spaces are for the indent
 data, _ := json.MarshalIndent(user, "", "  ")
 //Print json formatted
 fmt.Println(string(data))
}

Answer 2

i am sort of new to go, but this is what i gathered up so far:

package srf

import (
    "bytes"
    "encoding/json"
    "os"
)

func WriteDataToFileAsJSON(data interface{}, filedir string) (int, error) {
    //write data as buffer to json encoder
    buffer := new(bytes.Buffer)
    encoder := json.NewEncoder(buffer)
    encoder.SetIndent("", "\t")

    err := encoder.Encode(data)
    if err != nil {
        return 0, err
    }
    file, err := os.OpenFile(filedir, os.O_RDWR|os.O_CREATE, 0755)
    if err != nil {
        return 0, err
    }
    n, err := file.Write(buffer.Bytes())
    if err != nil {
        return 0, err
    }
    return n, nil
}

This is the execution of the function, and just standard

b, _ := json.MarshalIndent(SomeType, "", "\t")

Code:

package main

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "io/ioutil"
    "log"

    minerals "./minerals"
    srf "./srf"
)

func main() {

    //array of Test struct
    var SomeType [10]minerals.Test

    //Create 10 units of some random data to write
    for a := 0; a < 10; a++ {
        SomeType[a] = minerals.Test{
            Name:   "Rand",
            Id:     123,
            A:      "desc",
            Num:    999,
            Link:   "somelink",
            People: []string{"John Doe", "Aby Daby"},
        }
    }

    //writes aditional data to existing file, or creates a new file
    n, err := srf.WriteDataToFileAsJSON(SomeType, "test2.json")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    fmt.Println("srf printed ", n, " bytes to ", "test2.json")

    //overrides previous file
    b, _ := json.MarshalIndent(SomeType, "", "\t")
    ioutil.WriteFile("test.json", b, 0644)

}

Answer 3

Here is my solution:

import (
    "bytes"
    "encoding/json"
)

const (
    empty = ""
    tab   = "\t"
)

func PrettyJson(data interface{}) (string, error) {
    buffer := new(bytes.Buffer)
    encoder := json.NewEncoder(buffer)
    encoder.SetIndent(empty, tab)

    err := encoder.Encode(data)
    if err != nil {
       return empty, err
    }
    return buffer.String(), nil
}

Answer 4

Here's what I use. If it fails to pretty print the JSON it just returns the original string. Useful for printing HTTP responses that should contain JSON.

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "bytes"
)

func jsonPrettyPrint(in string) string {
    var out bytes.Buffer
    err := json.Indent(&out, []byte(in), "", "\t")
    if err != nil {
        return in
    }
    return out.String()
}

Answer 5

The accepted answer is great if you have an object you want to turn into JSON. The question also mentions pretty-printing just any JSON string, and that's what I was trying to do. I just wanted to pretty-log some JSON from a POST request (specifically a CSP violation report).

To use MarshalIndent, you would have to Unmarshal that into an object. If you need that, go for it, but I didn't. If you just need to pretty-print a byte array, plain Indent is your friend.

Here's what I ended up with:

import (
    "bytes"
    "encoding/json"
    "log"
    "net/http"
)

func HandleCSPViolationRequest(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
    body := App.MustReadBody(req, w)
    if body == nil {
        return
    }

    var prettyJSON bytes.Buffer
    error := json.Indent(&prettyJSON, body, "", "\t")
    if error != nil {
        log.Println("JSON parse error: ", error)
        App.BadRequest(w)
        return
    }

    log.Println("CSP Violation:", string(prettyJSON.Bytes()))
}

Answer 6

For better memory usage, I guess this is better:

var out io.Writer
enc := json.NewEncoder(out)
enc.SetIndent("", "    ")
if err := enc.Encode(data); err != nil {
    panic(err)
}