Repair broken, truncated and malformed JSON

Why JSON breaks in practice

Strict JSON is unforgiving: one stray comma or missing bracket makes the whole document unparseable. Real documents break for ordinary reasons.

• A log line or API response was cut off, so the closing braces and brackets never arrived.
• JSON was copied from a JavaScript object, a config file or documentation, with unquoted keys, single quotes or trailing commas.
• A hand edit removed a comma, a colon or a value.
• A string was never closed, so everything after it is swallowed.

What JSONWeave detects and repairs

JSONWeave uses a tolerant parser that never throws on bad input. It builds the best document it can and records what looked wrong, so the editor, tree and diagnostics keep working on a broken file.

• Trailing commas
• Unquoted property names
• Single-quoted strings
• Unterminated strings
• Missing commas, colons and values (a missing value becomes null)
• Missing closing braces and brackets, the usual result of truncated JSON
• Duplicate keys, reported so you can decide which one is right
• Comments, which are tolerated while parsing and dropped from the repaired output

Example: a truncated API response

This response was cut off inside an array. JSONWeave reports the missing closing bracket and brace and previews the completed document.

{
  "user": "ada",
  "roles": ["admin", "editor"

{
  "user": "ada",
  "roles": [
    "admin",
    "editor"
  ]
}

What repair cannot do

Repair completes structure. It cannot recover data that never arrived. If a response was cut off in the middle of a value, the repaired document holds only what was received, and a missing value becomes null. Read the preview before you apply it.

How the repair workflow works

• Paste or open the broken JSON. It loads even when invalid.
• Open Repair JSON from the toolbar or the command palette.
• Read the list of issues.
• Check the preview of the repaired document.
• Click Apply fixes to replace the editor contents, then format, inspect or copy the result.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Validate JSON
• Format, beautify and minify JSON
• How to fix truncated or incomplete JSON
• Common JSON syntax errors and how to fix them