Was I Seeing Things?

Something happened yesterday that has me completely baffled.

I needed to open a match endpoint in my Chrome browser to check one or two details as I've done many times before. Well it loaded in the window as usual but something about the display looked different - there was a new Chrome 'toolbar' at the top of the browser pane (just above the data), that had the title in it of 'Pretty print' with a checkbox.

I clicked on the checkbox and the alph-spaghetti tangle of the JSON endpoint was suddenly transformed into a beautifully formated and readable list of fields. I've often pasted an endpoint into a separate website that offers this service but I've never seen Chrome do it before.

That's a really useful new feature I thought and assumed it was now part and parcel of Google Chrome. But firing up my laptop this morning and opening Chrome, there's no sign of that feature anywhere.

I've just been searching through Chrome docs and help sites for an hour or two and the only thing I can find is a Chrome extension that provides the feature but I've never loaded or used such an extension.

I'm convinced I must have done something accidentally with a shortcut key to enable Pretty print but I've scoured the list in the Help information and there's nothing listed.

Question: Has anyone else experienced this and if so, how do I get that back easily?

* If I didn't need that extension to use Pretty print yesterday, I shouldn't need it today.

Yes, I know this isn't strictly relevant to the activities of this club but it's so useful being able to view the JSON data of endpoints that I thought it might be of use to others. 😉

Firefox has formatted API data for a long time. Maybe Chrome are playing catchup.

I saw that Edge (using the same core engine as Chrome) has been displaying the json files in a better formatted way since a couple of days too. That's kind of cool.

Possibly but it's a bit of a 'Cheshire cat' because I can't find it anywhere now and I can't find any online reference beyond the Chrome extension.

(I've got used to Chrome and don't really want to switch to Firefox)

In Chrome? If so, do you still see the 'Pretty print' bar when downloading JSON endpoints?

I use the 'jq' command line utility (along with curl, usually) to see a nicely formatted JSON response

If you're in the Sources pane of Chrome you should be able to click on the curly braces at the bottom of the view and get the Pretty Print format. You'll probably see `{ } Line 1, Column 1` when you first go to that pane. Just click the braces and it toggles between formatted and unformatted.

I'm looking t the Sources pane and there're no braces to be seen - is it possible you have the Chrome Pretty print extension installed?

You are referring to this? ....

I managed to find the { } eventually but it's necessary to open a source file first and the JSON displayed is in a very small pane.

What I'm trying to find is the Pretty print checkbox that appeared out of nowhere in my main browser pane.

It appeared a few days ago for me, tested just now annd it was still there and I could use it. Then I went to check my Chrome version and a new update started installing, telling me to relaunch to complete it. After relaunch, pretty print bar has disappeared lol

Guess what - it's back again!

.

Can anyone else that in their Chrome browser - I wonder if it will stay this time?

Just came up for me as well. Never seen it before.

Looks to be a Chrome extension.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pretty-js/kililblhcfpodipkcbobnbgnbbhgbkji?pli=1

Weirdly, I can't see that as an extension in my browser. Wonder if Chrome have included it as a feature.

Yeah it works for me too, without installing the extension. I'm using a Chromebook, so I'm pretty much entirely in Google-land

This is my favourite end point.

https://api.chess.com/pub/player/tennisultra34

Could be prettier with some colour-coding, but certainly more readable than plain text.

[Same player comes up as closed on the WWW (reported elsewhere)]