JSON Tree Viewer

About JSON Tree Viewer

Visualise JSON as a hierarchical tree diagram with connector lines drawn between parents and children, so the shape of the document is something you can see rather than infer from indentation. Where a plain formatted view leaves you counting spaces to work out what belongs to what, the connector lines make nesting depth immediately legible — which is what you want when the question is how a document is structured rather than what one particular field contains. Nodes near the root open automatically and everything deeper starts folded, so you get a useful overview the moment it renders. Every branch also carries a badge with its type and size — array[12] or an object with its key count — so a collapsed node still tells you what is inside it.

Key features

• Tree diagram with connector lines showing the parent and child relationship at every level
• Sensible default state — the top levels open automatically, deeper nodes start collapsed
• Every node expands and collapses independently
• Values colour-coded by type for quick scanning
• Type and size badge on every branch — arrays show their length and objects their key count, so collapsed nodes still carry information
• Rows highlight on hover, which keeps your place when a branch is wider than the pane
• Consistent indentation per depth level, so nesting depth is visually measurable
• Parse errors report the line number where parsing failed
• Handles deeply nested documents without flattening or truncating them
• Runs entirely in your browser with nothing uploaded

How to use it

1. Paste your JSON into the input pane and click Parse.
2. Read the tree — the connector lines show what belongs to what.
3. Click any node to expand or collapse that branch.
4. Follow the lines down into the branch you are interested in.

Tips & common mistakes

• Use this when the question is structural — how deep does this nest, what shape is this document, where does this array actually sit. For finding a single value, the JSON Viewer is quicker.
• Excessive depth is a design smell that this view makes obvious. More than five or six levels usually means the payload is worth flattening before you model it in code.
• The top levels open on load deliberately, so you get an overview without clicking. Collapse them to compare sibling branches side by side.
• Screenshots of this view are genuinely useful in documentation and bug reports — the connector lines survive as an explanation in a way that pasted JSON does not.
• Both this and the JSON Viewer are read-only explorers. To change the document, edit it in the JSON Formatter and paste the result back.
• If parsing fails, the JSON Validator will give you the parser message along with the line.
• The size badges are the quickest way to sanity-check an API response: an array that should hold your results showing array[0] tells you the request succeeded and matched nothing, which is a different problem from an outright failure.
• Comparing two responses is easier if you collapse everything to the same depth in both, then expand only the branch in question — matching shapes line up and the difference stands out.

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