gh-131952: Add color to the json CLI

[tomasr8]

Example:

I'm open to changing the colors. For now it's green for strings, yellow for numbers and cyan for true/false/null.

• Issue: Color in json.tool CLI #131952

[StanFromIreland]

How much of a performance impact does this have?

[picnixz]

How much of a performance impact does this have?

It doesn't matter here. json.tool is more of a visualization tool. If users don't want to colorize the output they can also disable it using the NO_COLOR env. var IIRC. OTOH, we could add an explicit --pretty flag to enable colorization instead of making the default.

[tomasr8]

OTOH, we could add an explicit --pretty flag to enable colorization instead of making the default.

I think we might not need that, can_colorize can already detect most situations where color is not desirable (e.g. not a TTY). You can also set NO_COLOR to turn off colors unconditionally.

[picnixz]

What about CLIs? they would be broken if data is piped?

[tomasr8]

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)

[raztd]

@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

[tomasr8]

@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 :. I will make a couple different color versions and then we can decide which one looks the best.

[hugovk]

This variable isn't doing much, shall we just call the function directly?

[tomasr8]

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?

[tomasr8]

Actually, I applied your other suggestion which already removed it so never mind 😄

[hugovk]

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.

[python-cla-bot]

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[tomasr8]

Here's a version with keys in a different color and a bit better color contrast:

[AA-Turner]

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?

[tomasr8]

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:

[AA-Turner]

I also prefer the bold version, thanks.

A

[tomasr8]

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?

[raztd]

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:

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

[tomasr8]

could you bold the keys and leave the values regular?

I think I prefer the bold colors. In my opinion, they are more legible when bold, especially with the light theme.

[raztd]

could you bold the keys and leave the values regular?

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

[AA-Turner]

Thanks!

A

[hugovk]

Looking good. One suggestion, jq uses default colour/uncoloured for numbers:

Which is more readable with light background than yellow?

[hugovk]

Please could you also add this to What's New, and mention the colour env vars, like the other similar entries?

[tomasr8]

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

I find the color contrast for the intense blue variant better compared to just bold blue:

One suggestion, jq uses default colour/uncoloured for numbers:
Which is more readable with light background than yellow?

Looks good:

[tomasr8]

Please could you also add this to What's New, and mention the colour env vars, like the other similar entries?

Added - I reused your entry from the calendar module ;)

[hugovk]

Thank you! 🎨