Google Chrome Plugin for JSON Reading

Question

Is there a Chrome plugin that renders JSON files in Chrome? Currently Chrome just tries to download them, and that's kind of boring.

Answer 1

Apparently, some time ago someone asked how to build such an extension on the Chromium-extensions Google group, and the answer was that it's not yet possible.

More recently, someone else asked the same question again - so, it looks like it won't take long for such an extension to appear, as soon as API support is implemented.

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Meanwhile, if you're really bothered by this and you can install a local proxy (Fiddler2, for example), you could try to make it change the Content-Type header for all responses where it is "application/json" to "text/plain" - and do it only for Chrome page requests. This will trick Chrome into showing you a plain text view of the JSON data, instead of trying to download it. Be careful, though: this could break some web applications which expect the "application/json" content-type.

To implement this with Fiddler, just choose "Customize Rules" from Fiddler's "Rules" menu, and when the CustomRules.js file opens, add this variable to the beginning of the Handlers class:

class Handlers
{
    // You have to add these two lines
    public static RulesOption("Show JSON data as plain text in Chrome")
    var m_JSON2Text: boolean = false;

And then add, at the end of the OnBeforeResponse method, just before the closing bracket:

    if(m_JSON2Text) {
        var isJson = oSession.oResponse["Content-Type"].indexOf("application/json") != -1;
        var isChrome = oSession.oRequest["User-Agent"].indexOf("Chrome") != -1;
        if(isJson && isChrome) {
            oSession.oResponse["Content-Type"] = "text/plain; ";
        }
    }
    // Next is the closing bracket. Add all lines preceding this comment
}

This will add an item named "Show JSON data as plain text in Chrome" to Fiddler's "Rules" menu, which you'll be able to turn on/off, triggering/disabling the required behaviour.

The overhead is having to keep Fiddler2 running while browsing. If that will or will not be noticeable depends, of course, on your hardware/software configuration.

Answer 2

I got impatient waiting for a new Chrome API and ported JSONView just using simple regex matching.

http://github.com/jamiew/jsonview-chrome

This is a rough draft, but it works! You can install it using "Load unpacked extension" from the chrome://extensions -- working out some kinks but will package it as a real extension soon.

For further prettification checkout the "XML Tree" extension (SuperUser won't let me post 2 links yet)

Answer 3

JSONView for chrome

• In-browser viewer
• Expand and contract JSON items
• Format validation
• Doesn't require .json ending

Enable:

Chrome wrench button >> Tools >> Extensions >> "Allow access to file URLs"

Answer 4

FYI there's now also a more polished extension, Pretty JSON: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ddngkjbldiejbheifcmnfmmfiniimbbg

Answer 5

To display JSON URLs that are served with a custom (vendor) MIME type, you may use JSONView 0.0.32 together with application/...+json|+xml as inline 0.0.2.

Answer 6

IE and Firefox are JSON capable but not Chrome.

I'm developping in Javascript and PHP and I MUST use JSON to read a PHP array from Javascript. There is no other way to get this working.

So, I'm waiting for Chrome being compatable.