Print JSON parsed object?

Question

You know what JSON stands for? JavaScript Object Notation. It makes a pretty good format for objects.

JSON.stringify(obj) will give you back a string representation of the object.

Most debugger consoles support displaying objects directly. Just use

console.log(obj);

Depending on your debugger this most likely will display the object in the console as a collapsed tree. You can open the tree and inspect the object.

If you want a pretty, multiline JSON with indentation then you can use JSON.stringify with its 3rd argument:

JSON.stringify(value[, replacer[, space]])

For example:

var obj = {a:1,b:2,c:{d:3, e:4}};

JSON.stringify(obj, null, "    ");

or

JSON.stringify(obj, null, 4);

will give you following result:

"{
    "a": 1,
    "b": 2,
    "c": {
        "d": 3,
        "e": 4
    }
}"

In a browser console.log(obj) does even better job, but in a shell console (node.js) it doesn't.

try console.dir() instead of console.log()

console.dir(obj);

MDN says console.dir() is supported by:

• FF8+
• IE9+
• Opera
• Chrome
• Safari

to Print JSON parsed object just type

console.log( JSON.stringify(data, null, " ") );

and you will get output very clear