ralf1qdev / json-toolkit

# JSON Toolkit
A local Python utility for validating, formatting, minifying, and comparing JSON.
Use the desktop window or run commands in your terminal. No third-party Python packages, accounts, or network connection required.
## Start here
Requires Python 3.9 or newer. Desktop mode also requires Tkinter, included in many Python installations. On Windows, keep the Tcl/Tk option enabled when installing Python.
1. Download and extract this project.
2. Open a terminal in the extracted `json-toolkit` folder.
3. Start the app:
 [code] 
On Windows you can use `py` instead of `python`; on macOS/Linux you may need `python3`.
If Tkinter is unavailable, the terminal commands still work.
## Desktop design
The desktop workspace uses a midnight palette with blue accents, syntax highlighting, line numbers, live document counts, adjustable side-by-side editors, and colored comparison results.
- **Copy result** copies the right editor to the clipboard.
- **Ctrl+O** opens a file, **Ctrl+Enter** formats, and **Ctrl+S** saves the result.
- Validation errors appear in the status area without interrupting editing.
- Highlighting is disabled above 150,000 characters to keep larger documents responsive.
## Desktop workflow
- Paste JSON into the left editor, or choose **Open**.
- **Validate** checks syntax, duplicate keys, and invalid constants.
- **Format**, **Minify**, or **Sort keys** writes the result to the right editor.
- **Save result** exports the right editor to a file; the file picker asks before overwriting.
- To **Compare**, paste the second JSON document into the right editor. A separate window shows the differences without replacing either document.
JSON syntax errors include the line and column. Duplicate-key errors identify the key.
## Terminal commands
 [code] 
Formatting and minifying print to the terminal unless `-o` is supplied. Output files are created only if the destination does not exist, protecting existing data.
Use `-` as the input filename to read from standard input.
Exit codes: **0** success or no differences; **1** comparison found differences; **2** invalid input or another error.
## Data handling
- Files stay on your computer; the program makes no network requests.
- Numbers use decimal arithmetic during parsing, avoiding binary-float precision loss.
- Formatting can normalize number notation and escape Unicode characters without changing their values.
- Comparison ignores object-key order and whitespace, preserves array order, and compares formatted values. Numeric representations such as `1` and `1.0` may appear as differences.
- Duplicate keys, `NaN`, and `Infinity` are rejected rather than silently accepted.
- Input is UTF-8 (an optional UTF-8 BOM is accepted when opening files).
- This is an in-memory tool for everyday configuration files, not a streaming processor for huge datasets. Very large or deeply nested input may exceed available resources.
## Checks
 [code] 
## Put it on GitHub
1. Create a public repository named `json-too