fkei / json.minify

Simple minifier for JSON to remove comments and whitespace (node.js and browser)

About

Feature

/*! JSON.minify() v0.1 (c) Kyle Simpson MIT License */

JSON.minify() minifies blocks of JSON-like content into valid JSON by removing all whitespace and comments.

JSON parsers (like JavaScript's JSON.parse() parser) generally don't consider JSON with comments to be valid and parseable. So, the intended usage is to minify development-friendly JSON (with comments) to valid JSON before parsing, such as:

JSON.parse(JSON.minify(str));

Now you can maintain development-friendly JSON documents, but minify them before parsing or before transmitting them over-the-wire.

Though comments are not officially part of the JSON standard, this post from Douglas Crockford back in late 2005 helps explain the motivation behind this project.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/json/message/152

"A JSON encoder MUST NOT output comments. A JSON decoder MAY accept and ignore comments."

Basically, comments are not in the JSON generation standard, but that doesn't mean that a parser can't be taught to ignore them. Which is exactly what JSON.minify() is for.

The first implementation of JSON.minify() is in JavaScript, but the intent is to port the implementation to as many other environments as possible/practical.

NOTE: As transmitting bloated (ie, with comments/whitespace) JSON would be wasteful and silly, this JSON.minify() is intended for use in server-side processing environments where you can strip comments/whitespace from JSON before parsing a JSON document, or before transmitting such over-the-wire from server to browser.

install

npm repo

$ npm install jsonminify

npm source

$ npm install https://github.com/fkei/JSON.minify.git

example

var jsonminify = require("jsonminify");

jsonminify('{"key":"value"/** comment **/}')
>> '{"key":"value"}'

JSON.minify('{"key":"value"/** comment **/}')
>> '{"key":"value"}'

command-line

Please use here. Use JSON.minify internally.

node-mjson https://github.com/fkei/node-mjson

build

$ make

release

$ make release

test

$ make test

jshint

$ make jshint

Document

• JSDoc - API Document
• Plato - Report
• Mocha - Test result (HTML)

Web-Site

Github pages - JSON.minify Home Page

LICENSE

forked from getify/JSON.minify

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

json.minify's Issues

not remove comments last line

    it('comments last line', function() {
        var json = `{"key":"value"}//comments`;
        var res = JSON.minify(json);
        res.should.equal(`{"key":"value"}`);
    });
// but get
`{"key":"value"}comments`

not remove last whitespaces

    it('remove whitespace', function() {
        var json = '{ " k e y ":   " va lue"       } ';
        var res = JSON.minify(json);
        res.should.equal('{" k e y ":" va lue"}');
    });

// but get
`{" k e y ":" va lue"       } `

jsonminify( [ ] ) --> ""

jsonminify( [ ] ); // returns ""

It should return "[]" of course.

An empty object transforms to an empty string

If you pass an empty object without carry line inside, the function returns an empty string, which fails JSON.parse.

To reproduce it you may run:

JSON.parse(jsonminify('{}'))

the expected output is '{}'

utf8 issues?

It appears it wont minify certain encoded strings?

ether/etherpad-lite#2259

Please update JSON.minify(..) for important fix

See: getify@a5ea0ba

Option to only strip comments, no minify

For debugging purposes I don't like to always minify my JSON, however most JSON parsers don't like comments.

A command-line utility to remove quickly comments from a json would be of great use

Hello fkei,

I need to be able to minify a given json file from the command-line
(I'm on macosx, but with homebrew, node, python, ... everything installed) so that I can do

$ jsonminify manifest-with-comments.json --output manifest.json

actually, that would be even best if the command-line utility would be clever enough to just Do What I Want. "Oh, the filename follows this -with-comments.json conention". So the following command would be a shortcut as the one before

$ jsonminify manifest-with-comments.json

manifest-with-comments.json being here a file in my little free software project https://github.com/internaciulo/search-tab-in-chrome-s-omnibox

I opened an issue there getify#13

@getify replied: No such command-line tool exists in this project. I would suggest asking the maintainer of that npm package if they'll make a command-line tool. It's pretty easy to do, but it just hasn't been done here. I would accept a pull request from someone if they implemented a good one.

Hence this new issue here.

Arigato!

faster minify functions?

Seems like Kit's version is fastest to minifiy JSON: http://jsperf.com/json-minify/3

FreeBSD support

Install fails under FreeBSD, but this module doesn't contain any native component, so it should probably accept all OS'es.

Leaves few whitespaces at the end

For an example, I've tried to minify JSON document here - https://gist.github.com/syst3mw0rm/11240696 and the output I got is - https://gist.github.com/syst3mw0rm/11240705 which contains few whitespaces at the end which we should get rid off in minified version.