jacinto

Format and validate JSON files. It uses Python as the validating engine but it is implemented in 100% VimL.

No need to install any formatting library or external dependencies. Just drop the plugin (fully supports pathogen.vim) in the plugin directory or in your pathogen bundle dir and start validating away!

Usage

This plugin provides a single command with a few optional arguments:

:Jacinto

All optional arguments to the above command are tab-completable. The arguments available are:

validate
format
syntax
version

Validation

When :Jacinto validate is called, the whole file goes through the validation engine to report back on any errors. If none are present a message is returned, similar to:

:jacinto ==> Valid  JSON!

When validation fails, it shows the actual error message from the engine and it places your cursor in the line and column where the error reports is having a problem. For example, you could see a message like this one when an error occurs:

Expecting , delimiter: line 10 column 15 (char 278)

The cursor should be automatically placed on that line and that column.

Formatting

When :Jacinto format is called it does two things: validates first and formats second. If validation fails, it displays the error message and places the cursor in the line and column where the error was reported, otherwise, if the JSON is valid it will format the whole file.

You cannot validate a portion of JSON

It is all or nothing here.

When JSON has been formatted you can expect a message like:

:jacinto ==> Formatted valid JSON

Syntax

More of a hack really, we just set the filetype of the document to be Javascript and let Vim take over the actual syntax highlighting for us. If you have any special behavior for Javascript you should be aware of this when triggering the highlighting (for example, indentation and tab spaces).

The plugin also includes a callabale so you can trigger this automatically every time you read a JSON file. If you would want this functionality you would need to add a line similar to this one:

autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.json call jacinto#syntax()

Python

Probably there is no need to know about Python as the validating engine but that is what we use on the back end. It calls python -m json.tool <filename> to format the file and to find any errors.