Tales from support: Picking the right editor view for large JSON data

A user asked about opening large JSON data in JSONBuddy. This can be tricky if the default view for JSON data is set to the Grid view in the editor settings. Not all data is suitable for the Grid view. JSON with many child properties at the same parent can take a lot of processing time and memory if displayed as a grid.

I do not believe this is a fault in your software, as all other editors seem to be overwhelmed by the 450,000 rows as well. I was just curious if you had any tips that may help improve the performance of this application.

And I replied:

450,000 rows in total is not that much as I frequently work with files with several million lines. I recommend using the text view modes of JSONBuddy if you are working with really large files. The editor supports a standard text view and a Large File view, which only keeps parts of the content in memory.

Set the default view to text for large data

As a first step, set the text view as the default view for large JSON, XML, or text data.

Set a limit in MB for the Large File text view

You can set the limit for the Large File view in the Options dialog on the Editor page. The setting defines the limit in megabytes for using the standard view:

Any file larger than the limit will be loaded in the Large File view. Using this view, it is no problem to browse files with a size of several GBs. In general, avoid the Grid view for large data and use the Large File view in the text editor.