JSON ⇄ YAML Conversion

Convert between JSON and YAML

YAML is a readability-focused config file format used in many places, such as Docker Compose, Kubernetes, and CI settings. Here you can convert in either direction between JSON, which programs handle easily, and YAML, which people read easily.

What's supported

Anything JSON can represent (objects, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans, null) can be converted in both directions. It handles nesting, flow style ([a, b]·{k: v}), block scalars (|·>), comments, and quoted strings.

Note: anchors/aliases (& *), custom tags, and multiple documents (----separated) are not supported. YAML containing these will raise an error.

JSON vs. YAML: when to use which

Both can represent the same data (objects and arrays), but they differ in look and purpose.

• JSON: strict syntax with braces {} and double quotes. Ideal for APIs and data exchange between programs. It cannot contain comments.
• YAML: structure by indentation, easy for humans to read and write. Because it supports comments, it's common in config files (Docker Compose, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and more).

This converter helps when you want to copy an API response (JSON) into a config file (YAML), or turn a YAML config into JSON to inspect it.

Example

This JSON:

{ "name": "morphy", "tags": ["web", "tool"] }

becomes this YAML:

name: morphy
tags:
  - web
  - tool

Things to watch for

Converting YAML to JSON drops comments, because JSON can't hold them. Numbers and booleans are treated as typed values, so if you want to keep something as a string, quote it on the YAML side.