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Show HN: I made a tool to easily transform and manipulate your JSON data (jsontransformer.com)

5 points by sonnyburni ↗ HN
Hey NN, I've create a tool that allows you to easily manipulate and transform json data. After looking round for something to allow me to perform json to json transformations I couldn't find any easy to use tools or libraries that offered this sort of functionality without requiring learning obscure syntax adding unnecessary complexity to my work or the alternative being manual changes often resulting in lots of errors or bugs. This is why I built JSON Transformer in the hope it will make these sort of tasks as simple as they should be. Would love to get your thoughts and feedback you have and what sort of additional functionality you would like to see incorporated Thanks! :)

https://www.jsontransformer.com/ (Link in case the other url doesn’t work)

22 comments

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leeuw01
What is the expressivity of this transformation tool/language compared to e.g. JSONPath or JMESPath?
sonnyburni
Under the hood It's using Jolt which allows for a lot of reshaping and modifications. JSONPath is great for straightforward querying and data extraction but lacks in some transformation aspects. I'd say JMESPath is somewhere in between, offering querying with some transformation features, making it more versatile than JSONPath but not as comprehensive as Jolt for transformations. if the primary goal is to transform JSON data structures, I'd say Jolt offers the most expressivity
banga
I was interested until the try for free locks you in to a subscription unless cancelled.

Better to put the effort into learning jq.

sonnyburni
Is the free trial not enough to tempt you to try it out?
cdchn
$9 a month? Really?
sonnyburni
How much would you be willing to pay for this?
i_like_robots
Firstly, congratulations on launching - it's uncanny timing and similarity to the project I've been building in my 10% time at work!

Here's a screenshot of my own efforts so far: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6fac23c3-79ef-4c0...

sonnyburni
Thanks! You're project looks awesome! I'd be very keen to learn some more about the reason you've been building it, who you are hoping to target with it and plan to do with it if you are :)
weego
I appreciate that you've built this out and it looks very professional.

It's not a service I could see wanting to pay more than just a tip for it existing. A sometimes useful VSCode extension is probably the extent of the usefulness.

sonnyburni
Thanks for the feedback! Are there any similar features or use cases you would be willing to pay for or would generally find useful for working with json?
Zhyl
I'll 'get started for free' with jq thanks.

Flippant HN comment aside, the syntax for trivial manipulations in jq is pretty straightforward, very similar to defining a dictionary in python. Non-trivial transformations are going to be complex regardless and not having to learn an 'obscure syntax' isn't going to make it easier to get your head around.

It reminds me of when people release a "friendlier syntax" for regular expressions: at the end of the day you still have to learn the underlying concepts in order to complete your task.

In order to use your tool it looks like you still need to learn JSONpaths as a concept and then learn what all the operators in your drop downs mean at which point why not learn some obscure syntax?

And then I have the overhead of an electron app which I'm paying $9 a month for.

Maybe this has a future as the component of someone else's all-in-one low/no-code ETL platform, but as a standalone tool being pitched to the HN crowd it makes no sense.

sonnyburni
Thanks for the feedback - really appreciate it :) TBH my target audience was TBH my target audience was more non technical/ less technically proficient/ developer adjacent people who might have to interact with json data. I agree with the fact is hard (if not impossible) to completely abstract away all the complexity and you'll still need to learn the underlying concepts. However my intention was to try to find the balance where I can reduce the amount of learning and difficulty involved
jawns
Conceptually, this is like https://jsonata.org but with a UI for applying the transforms.

Is it worth $9/mo. to anybody? Not sure, but if your entire day is spent wrangling with JSON data ... maybe?

sonnyburni
Thanks for the feedback - really appreciate it :) What would a more suitable price be in your opinion? My target audience was more a non technical/ less technically proficient audience who might have to deal with JSON data
xnx
(No particular ire for the author since this is widespread) Before SaaS derangement syndrome, this is the type of utility that would be on a shareware CD-ROM with the option to unlock the full version permanently for $9.
sonnyburni
Thanks for the feedback - appreciate it :) I understand your point but at the same time from my experience I think lots of less technically proficient who work adjacent to developers do struggle with these types of tasks so whilst no code/ low code tools and solutions have their issues its important to lower the barrier to entry and allow people to interact with technical work more easily.
_benj
This is such a cool tool! I wonder if the developer audience might me a bit of a misfit when we have stuff like jq or duckdb.

But here's a use case I had a few years ago. I was working with this system that needed occasional calibration from time to time from non-developers (read Product Manager or Technicians). The calibrations were stored in JSON, but JSON is quite finicky regarding syntax, specially when edited manually.

I implemented a graphical structured JSON editor that would take a JSON file, present you input fields to edit the JSON (input for text, checkboxes for bools, etc) and would allow the user to edit the JSON graphically and produce a valid JSON at the other end.

It was the tool I wish I had to tell the technicians to use when they needed to update things on the JSON file without manually editing the file.

I never published the project but it was really fun to work on it because I needed to handle the JSON in order, use types, and such things that JSON doesn't support so I ended up using Pest.rs, directly editing the AST, compiling to WASM... first time I using PEGs and such.

Best of luck with your project!

sonnyburni
Thanks so much for the feedback and sharing your experience - really appreciate it :) TBH my target audience was more non technical/ less technically proficient/ developer adjacent people who might have to interact with json data and need to perform these sort of updates so great to hear you had a similar use case in the past? In your opinion what sort of things would need to be added/changed to make this more appealing to that audience based on your experience in the past?
mgkimsal
This feels more like an annual subscription of something like $12-$14. $1/month, up front for a year sort of thing. If you've added some more value add stuff over the year, people may renew. That's assuming you want to keep 'subscription' approach and not just charge a one-off fee.