I Just Wanted to Find the Broken Comma

JSON is usually pretty easy to work with.

Until it isn’t.

Sometimes I’ll paste in a chunk of API data or a config file that looks completely fine, and suddenly I get an error.

Invalid JSON.

Great.

But where?

That’s usually the annoying part.

It might be one missing comma, an extra quote, or a bracket in the wrong place. In a short file, that’s easy enough to spot. In a few hundred lines of JSON, it can turn into a tiny scavenger hunt.

That’s why I made the JSON Formatter & Validator on HandyPebble.

I didn’t really want another tool that just tells me something is wrong. I wanted one that helps me get closer to the actual problem.

If the JSON is broken, the tool tries to point you to the line and column where things started going wrong, along with the nearby text.

That usually saves a lot of staring at brackets.

Once the JSON is valid, I can format it into something readable, minify it back into one line, sort the keys, or switch to a tree view when the structure gets a little messy.

Nothing fancy.

Just the things I usually need when I’m working with JSON.

I also wanted it to stay in the browser.

API responses and config files can sometimes contain things I’d rather not send to another server just to clean up the formatting. So the JSON you paste into the tool is processed locally in your browser.

No account. No upload.

A tiny syntax error shouldn’t turn into a scavenger hunt.

Sometimes I just want to find the broken comma, fix it, and get back to what I was doing.