How can I pretty-print JSON using node.js?

Question

This seems like a solved problem but I am unable to find a solution for it.

Basically, I read a JSON file, change a key, and write back the new JSON to the same file. All works, but I loose the JSON formatting.So, instead of:

{   name:'test',   version:'1.0' } 

I get

{name:'test',version:'1.1'} 

Is there a way in Node.js to write well formatted JSON to file ?

Answer 1

JSON.stringify's third parameter defines white-space insertion for pretty-printing. It can be a string or a number (number of spaces). Node can write to your filesystem with fs. Example:

var fs = require('fs');  fs.writeFile('test.json', JSON.stringify({ a:1, b:2, c:3 }, null, 4)); /* test.json: {      "a": 1,      "b": 2,      "c": 3, } */ 

See the JSON.stringify() docs at MDN, Node fs docs