Emacs mode to edit JSON

Question

Does anybody know a good Emacs mode to edit JSON? An app I am working on uses a JSON based communication protocol and having the data nicely indented and syntax-highlighted woul

Answer 1

js3-mode:https://github.com/thomblake/js3-mode

js3-mode is an improved js2-mode

This package can be installed by package-list-packages command

Answer 2

I will also second Josh's json-mode, but also recommend flymake-json as an addition. It helps highlight syntax errors.

I don't like using python -mjson.tool because it reorders items in JSON objects. I find (prog-indent-sexp) works just fine to reindent, and using jsonlint instead of python -mjson.tool works for pretty printing/reformatting in beautify-json

(eval-after-load "json-mode"
  '(progn
     (require 'flymake-json)
     ;; flymake-cursor displays error in minibuffer message area instead of requiring hover
     (require 'flymake-cursor)

     (add-hook 'json-mode-hook 'flymake-json-load)
     (define-key json-mode-map "\C-c\C-n" (function flymake-goto-next-error))
  )
)

Answer 3

JSON is supported by espresso-mode

Answer 4

Have you tried Steve Yegge's js2-mode for Emacs?

Answer 5

I've prepared a workaround for js2-mode so it parses json files without errors. You can find it in my comment: http://code.google.com/p/js2-mode/issues/detail?id=50#c7

(I wanted to post it as a comment do J.F. Sebastian solution, but it seems I'm not allowed to do so (no 'add comment' link))

Answer 6

If you want something lightweight try this major-mode I hacked together: https://github.com/joshwnj/json-mode

It's actually no more than some extra syntax highlighting on top of javascript-mode, but for my purposes I've found it to work quite well.

Another common use-case is auto-formatting a JSON file (eg. if it's whitespace-compressed and you want more readability). To do this I'm just piping the buffer through a command-line script: C-u M-|