gh-131952: Add color to the json CLI
#132126
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It doesn't matter here. |
I think we might not need that, |
AA-Turner
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json.tool CLI.json.tool CLI
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What about CLIs? they would be broken if data is piped? |
AFAIU they wouldn't (and local testing confirms that), see this comment from Hugo: #131952 (comment) |
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@tomasr8 thank you for taking the time to look into it. couple of notes regarding the keys 1) could you make them a different color from the string values? 2) could you make them bold? this is what jq does and i think it provides a good ux https://static1.howtogeekimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/5-7.png |
That should be in theory possible, we can distinguish keys from string literals since keys are always followed by |
Lib/json/tool.py
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| with_colors = can_colorize() | ||
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This variable isn't doing much, shall we just call the function directly?
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I may have been too cautious here. Without the variable, the function would be called in a loop and I was worried the result could change in between invocations, though that is really unlikely. If you prefer I can remove it?
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Actually, I applied your other suggestion which already removed it so never mind 😄
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No, that's a good point: there could be a lot of objs as JSONL files can be quite long. Let's add with_colors back, but just outside the loop.
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All commit authors signed the Contributor License Agreement. |
Misc/NEWS.d/next/Library/2025-04-05-16-05-34.gh-issue-131952.HX6gCX.rst
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hugovk
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json.tool CLIjson CLI
Co-authored-by: Adam Turner <[email protected]>
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Here's a couple more variants. The first is the current and uses the same colors as Lukasz's syntax highlight PR. The last one uses a different color for the keys. 
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Here's a version with keys in a different color and a bit better color contrast: 
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The green and cyan colours here look bad on the white background, which is the default for Windows Terminal, PyCharm's in-built terminal, etc. Could you darken them? |
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The previous green and cyan were the 'intense' variants. Here's the normal one. Below is also a version where the colors are bold which I think looks even better. 
With bold colors: 
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I also prefer the bold version, thanks. A |
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Thanks for your feedback! I think it looks much better now :) I added the bold colors and updated tests. Would you mind taking another look? |
i like the colors. one small request: could you bold the keys and leave the values regular? that's how jq does it https://static1.howtogeekimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/5-7.png |
I think I prefer the bold colors. In my opinion, they are more legible when bold, especially with the light theme. |
in the last pair of screenshots, i see only the values as bold. the keys look regular. my proposal was to invert those. or do you want to make the keys bold, too? i think that could work |
| for key in _colors: | ||
| if m := match.group(key): | ||
| color = _colors[key] |
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| for key in _colors: | |
| if m := match.group(key): | |
| color = _colors[key] | |
| for key, color in _colors.items(): | |
| if m := match.group(key): |
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Looking good. One suggestion, jq uses default colour/uncoloured for numbers: 
Which is more readable with light background than yellow? 
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Please could you also add this to What's New, and mention the colour env vars, like the other similar entries? |
Example:
I'm open to changing the colors. For now it's green for strings, yellow for numbers and cyan for true/false/null.