javascript JSON response formatting

Question

Folks, Trying to understand returning and forming JSON responses.

The following code returns the object as a single string:

res.send(JSON.stringify(data));

Output to the browser:

{"Count":1,"Items":[{"dbsource":{"S":"x"},"number":{"S":"5002820"},"name":{"S":"blah,foo"},"expiration":{"S":"06/13/2015"},"type":{"S":"bar"}}]}

Dont I want the JSON output to be more readable, ie :

{
"one": "two",
"key": "value"
}

What should i change JSON.stringify(data) to? Ideally I want the response to be used as an API endpoint.

Thanks!

I'd leave it alone, and then develop some sort of pretty-printer to be used by a client of the API. — Pointy
– Pointy, Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 16:17
I'm with Pointy. If it's only going to be an endpoint, leave it the way it is and leave the formatting to whatever client is doing the consuming. — Josh
– Josh, Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 16:19
@Clustermagnet well the insights of LightStyle and Deepak Mishra make my point irrelevant if not plain dumb, but my thinking was that JSON is mostly for machine consumption, and isn't very human-friendly no matter how nicely it's formatted. — Pointy
– Pointy, Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 16:44

Sorter · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-06 16:29:52Z

2

You are almost there. Use stringify with spaces

var str = JSON.stringify(data, undefined, 2);

The above string will have indentation with 2 spaces.

answered Nov 6, 2013 at 16:29

Sorter

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2 Comments

Can you please fix the reference? 404

fixed the reference. Thanks.