How to Format and Validate JSON: A Beginner Guide

What is JSON?

JSON is a lightweight text format used by websites and apps to exchange data. It is built from objects in curly braces and arrays in square brackets.

Common JSON errors

The most frequent mistakes are trailing commas, single quotes instead of double quotes, unquoted keys and missing brackets. A single mistake makes the whole document invalid.

Why format JSON?

Formatting adds indentation so nested data becomes readable, which makes debugging much faster than reading one long line.

Try it

Paste your JSON into our JSON Formatter to beautify it and see any syntax error straight away.