UglifyJs JavaScript API for JSON minification?

Question

So I am looping through files in a directory via Node and want to minify them with UglifyJs.

The API is dead easy for JavaScript files:

var UglifyJS = require("uglify-js")

// Looping here
UglifyJS.minify(listOfAllFiles[i])

However, the files I need to minify are JSON files, so this is producing an eval error. In the command line, if you are minifying JSON, you just pass --expr and it will evaluate as a single expression. Any idea how to pass this into the options object of the JavaScript API?

Cheers.

JSON =/= JavaScript. The syntax is different. There's very little about JSON that could be minified, even. — Cerbrus
– Cerbrus, Commented May 9, 2016 at 9:16
@Cerbrus Removal of whitespace. As I explicitly stated, UglifyJs supports JSON minification. — j_d
– j_d, Commented May 9, 2016 at 9:18

Daniel Diekmeier · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-15 14:31:29Z

12

If you're not dead set on UglifyJS, you could solve this with plain JavaScript, because JSON can't really be uglified that much. To remove all whitespace, use:

JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(listOfAllFiles[i]))

(Assuming listOfAllFiles[i] is the JSON string.)

edited May 15, 2018 at 14:31

answered May 9, 2016 at 10:00

Daniel Diekmeier

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j_d Over a year ago

Ah very helpful! This will indeed do the trick and is super easy.

Bean · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-20 10:35:06Z

2

UglifyJS doesn't minify JSON.

You can minify using jsonminify instead.

Contrary to what others are saying, JSON minification is useful, as it allows you to use comments in JSON (which are not allowed in .json files).

answered Mar 20, 2017 at 10:35

Bean

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