sahwar / json.minify

Simple minifier for JSON to remove comments and whitespace

JSON minify

Minify blocks of JSON-like content into valid JSON by removing all white-space and C/C++ style 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 of this project is to minify development-friendly JSON (i.e with comments) to valid JSON before parsing, such as:

JSON.parse(JSON.minify(str))

Now you can maintain development-friendly JSON documents, where your source is formatted & commented, but minify them before parsing or before transmitting them over-the-wire.

As transmitting bloated (ie, with comments/white-space) JSON would be wasteful and silly, this JSON minify can also be used for server-side processing environments where you can strip comments/white-space from JSON before parsing a JSON document or before transmitting such over-the-wire from server to browser.

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.

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 was in JavaScript (as JSON.minify), but the intent is to port the implementation to as many other environments and languages as possible/practical.

Using JSON Minify

Currently, JSON minify has been ported to multiple languages including PHP, Python, Objective C. Each of these ports live on a separate branch in the Github repository. Language specific instructions can be found in their respective branches.