Javascript – Using Node.JS, how to read a JSON file into (server) memory

javascriptjsonnode.js

Background

I am doing some experimentation with Node.js and would like to read a JSON object, either from a text file or a .js file (which is better??) into memory so that I can access that object quickly from code. I realize that there are things like Mongo, Alfred, etc out there, but that is not what I need right now.

Question

How do I read a JSON object out of a text or js file and into server memory using JavaScript/Node?

Best Answer

Sync:

var fs = require('fs');
var obj = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync('file', 'utf8'));

Async:

var fs = require('fs');
var obj;
fs.readFile('file', 'utf8', function (err, data) {
  if (err) throw err;
  obj = JSON.parse(data);
});

Related Solutions

Json – How to pretty-print JSON in a shell script

With Python 2.6+ you can do:

echo '{"foo": "lorem", "bar": "ipsum"}' | python -m json.tool

or, if the JSON is in a file, you can do:

python -m json.tool my_json.json

if the JSON is from an internet source such as an API, you can use

curl http://my_url/ | python -m json.tool

For convenience in all of these cases you can make an alias:

alias prettyjson='python -m json.tool'

For even more convenience with a bit more typing to get it ready:

prettyjson_s() {
    echo "$1" | python -m json.tool
}

prettyjson_f() {
    python -m json.tool "$1"
}

prettyjson_w() {
    curl "$1" | python -m json.tool
}

for all the above cases. You can put this in .bashrc and it will be available every time in shell. Invoke it like prettyjson_s '{"foo": "lorem", "bar": "ipsum"}'.

Note that as @pnd pointed out in the comments below, in Python 3.5+ the JSON object is no longer sorted by default. To sort, add the --sort-keys flag to the end. I.e. ... | python -m json.tool --sort-keys.

Json – the correct JSON content type

For JSON text:

application/json

The MIME media type for JSON text is application/json. The default encoding is UTF-8. ^{(Source: RFC 4627)}

For JSONP (runnable JavaScript) with callback:

application/javascript

Here are some blog posts that were mentioned in the relevant comments: