json-text-editor

JSON Editor

An html text editor for json inputs, with auto indentation and syntax highlight, both on the fly while typing. If this doesn't sound good enough:

• NO libraries, frameworks or transpilers required.
• It works with vanilla HTML / JS and it doesn't have any dependency.
• Easy integration, as it's a single javascript file. Available as a node package as well.
• FULL styling control with CSS.

Just add in your document:

<json-editor></json-editor>

to render this:

How to install

Setup for vanilla HTML / JS

Just take the file json-editor.js file. Then, add it to your application as usual.

<script src="json-editor.js" />

Setup for Node

First, add the package to your project.

npm install native-json-editor --save

Second and last, add the package to the files for which you will use it.

require('native-json-editor')

How to use it

After the setup, you will have 1 new HTML tag available to use: json-editor.

<json-editor>

Defines a new editor, similar to a vanilla textarea.

Attributes

• value: You can initialise the editor with some json, just add your json as a STRING using this value.
• indent: The number of "spaces" used in the indentation, default is 3.

For clarity, consider the following example:

<json-editor value='[ 1, 2, {"hello":"world"} ]' indent="5"></json-editor>

That will render:

API

To control the editor programmatically, you can use the following getters and setters:

• string_value: Gets/Sets the editor content as a string. Example:

  // get
  const value = editor.string_value // returns '[ 1, 2, {"hello":"world"} ]' as a string
  // set
  editor.string_value = '{ "other": "stuff" }' // sets the content of the editor
  

• json_value: Gets/Sets the editor content as data. Example:

  // get
  const value = editor.json_value // returns an array [ 1, 2, {"hello":"world"} ]
  // set
  editor.json_value = { "other": "stuff" } // sets the content of the editor from an object
  

• value: Value is just an alias for string_value, with no difference but the name. I recommend to use the prefixed getters and setters for clarity, but it's on you.

  // get
  const value = editor.value // returns '[ 1, 2, {"hello":"world"} ]' as a string
  // set
  editor.value = '{ "other": "stuff" }' // sets the content of the editor
  

Styling

To customize the style, we just need some CSS. As example we can create a "light theme" version of the editor just with:

/* a class name for the editor */
.light {
    background: #FFF;
    border: 1px solid black;
}

/* to customise the different tokens of the json syntax, we just do... */
.light::part(braces)        { color: #00b2e8 } /* curly braces {} */
.light::part(brackets)      { color: #d26a6a } /* brackets [] */
.light::part(colon)         { color: #000000 } /* colon : */
.light::part(comma)         { color: #000000 } /* comma , */
.light::part(string)        { color: #7c0d29; background: rgb(224, 213, 151) } /* strings */
.light::part(string_quotes) { color: #112ba1 } /* quotes wrapping strings */
.light::part(key)           { color: #1d0bbe; background: #20f5ff; } /* object keys */
.light::part(key_quotes)    { color: #ff2032 } /* quotes wrapping object keys */
.light::part(value)         { border: 1px solid #000 } /* object value */
.light::part(number)        { color: #ef33b0 } /* number */
.light::part(null)          { color: #21d6ff; background: #000; } /* null keyword */
.light::part(true)          { color: #ffd6d6; background: #000; } /* true keyword */
.light::part(false)         { color: #d6ffd6; background: #000; } /* false keyword */

<json-editor class="light"></json-editor>

the above will result in: