JSON Tools

JSON Tools is a standalone workbench for understanding API payloads without leaving WePROXA. Paste a document, open a local file, or send a captured response directly from the request list, then switch between five views of the same JSON.

Open JSON Tools

Open the workbench in any of these ways:

• Choose Tools → JSON Tools from the application menu.
• Press ⌘ ⇧ J on macOS or Ctrl + Shift + J on Windows.
• Open JSON Tools from the tray menu.
• Add JSON Tools to the main toolbar from Settings → Appearance → Toolbar Tools.
• Right-click a captured request and choose Tools → Inspect JSON.
• Open a response body in the details panel and select the Inspect JSON button.

Opening a captured response replaces the current document in the workbench. The action is available regardless of the response content type, so it can also explain why a payload that should be JSON does not parse. Responses with no body are not opened.

Load and Prepare a Document

Paste or edit JSON in the Document pane, or choose Open file to load a .json, .jsonl, or .txt file. The editor marks invalid JSON as you type.

Use Beautify to rewrite the document with the current indentation settings. Clear removes the input and its result. JSON Tools remembers the active view, query expressions, and formatting preferences between window opens; documents larger than 256 KiB are not retained in local storage.

Choose a View

All five tabs work from the same input document:

• Format — pretty-print or minify the document and show counts for values, keys, objects, arrays, and nesting depth.
• Tree — browse a collapsible, virtualized tree and copy the normalized path to any value.
• Schema — infer a JSON Schema Draft 2020-12 description from the sample. Arrays merge the shapes of their elements, and fields missing from some object samples are not marked as required.
• jq — run a jq-style filter and inspect each emitted result separately.
• JSONPath — select values with JSONPath expressions and see the normalized source path beside every match.

The jq and JSONPath tabs include ready-made example expressions. Query errors point to the relevant character when a position is available, and JSON parse errors include their line and column.

Format and Copy Results

The controls along the bottom apply consistently to formatted output, generated schemas, and query results:

• Minify removes insignificant whitespace.
• Sort keys writes object keys alphabetically.
• Indent selects two, four, or eight spaces, or tabs.

Use Copy output for formatted documents and schemas. Query views let you copy one result or every result; JSONPath results also retain the path that produced each value.

Limits and Long-Running Queries

JSON Tools accepts documents up to 16 MiB and 256 levels of nesting. The tree view shows up to 100,000 values, while jq and JSONPath return up to 10,000 results per query. When a result is truncated, the workbench says so instead of presenting the partial output as complete.

jq filters run with a time limit. If a filter contains an endless generator or otherwise fails to finish, narrow or correct the expression before retrying. Earlier timed-out jq runs are isolated from proxy processing, but several still-running queries can temporarily make the jq view report that it is busy.

Example Workflow

1. Capture the API request you want to investigate.
2. Right-click it and choose Tools → Inspect JSON.
3. Use Tree to locate the field and copy its path.
4. Switch to jq or JSONPath and narrow the payload to the values you need.
5. Copy the result, or use Schema to generate a starting point for validation or client types.

See Inspect Requests for the other actions available from captured traffic.