January 2, 2026
Pretty JSON, spicy drama
FracturedJson
FracturedJson makes data pretty; comments, pipes, and YAML ignite the crowd
TLDR: FracturedJson neatly formats JSON and even keeps comments, aiming to make data easier to read. The crowd loves the readability but clashes over using it for config files, demands pipe support like jq, and nitpicks line-breaking rules—because making data pretty is serious business.
FracturedJson promises to turn messy JSON data into neat, table-like lines you can actually read—and the crowd is loud about it. The splashiest cheer comes from users thrilled it can preserve comments in JSON. One top voice calls the ban on comments “silly,” turning this into a minor uprising against the “no-comments” rule. Cue the outlaw meme: “JSON comments are illegal but everywhere.”
Then the control room starts blinking: a strong faction warns, “Don’t use this for config files.” They argue TOML and YAML (human-friendly formats) are better, and even worry about Git code diffs getting messy when alignment changes. Meanwhile, the pragmatic camp imagines it shining in debug APIs and game dev data, where seeing aligned fields and color lists is pure dopamine.
Feature requests fly in hot. One asks for pipe support like jq (the popular command-line JSON tool), basically: “Can it read from standard input?” A formatter fan dreams bigger—could code formatters align like this too? And nitpickers arrive with precision: if one long item breaks a line, shouldn’t it be all-or-nothing?
Bottom line: FracturedJson makes JSON look like a spreadsheet, and the community is split between delighted readers, config-file purists, and pipe-powered command-line warriors.
Key Points
- •FracturedJson formats JSON to be readable and compact by keeping short arrays/objects on single lines.
- •It aligns fields across similar lines and uses multi-item-per-line layouts for long arrays.
- •The tool offers many configurable settings but produces good results with defaults.
- •It can optionally preserve comments and keep them near related elements, despite JSON not officially supporting comments.
- •FracturedJson is accessible via a browser page and available as a .NET library, JS/TS package, VS Code extension, with Python options noted.