Pretty print JSON output of Spring Boot Actuator endpoints

Actually I wanted to do the same. But then I asked: why? To debug my service better which comes with a small performance penalty.

Just use a browser extension, [like this one][1] :) to get a view like this one

[![enter image description here][2]][2]

[1]:

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[2]:

Instead of using `curl` I like to use [`httpie`][1] as a http command line client:

`http

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`

This would already format and syntax highlight the json response without having to pipe the output into another command. Also the command syntax is a bit more human friendly.


[1]:

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If you're using **gson** serialization with Spring, then none of the other answers will work for you. You'll have to use this configuration option:

`spring.gson.pretty-printing=true`

Confirmed working with Spring Boot as of version `2.0.3.Release`.

this not working

`spring.jackson.serialization.INDENT_OUTPUT=true`

this is working `spring.jackson.serialization.indent-output=true`

In case somebody with Spring Boot 2 (2.1.1 in my case) stumbles over this question as I did: We faced the same problem, and none of the answers helped for 2.1.1.

So what we did was to replace the existing endpoint (`health` in our case) with a new one. I described it at the end of [this answer][1]. And yes, this limits our solution to this single endpoint, but on the other hand it has the advantage of being able to format the output in any way you want - including pretty print JSON, but also output styled HTML if requested (by a service technician in a browser in our case). Note the `produces` attribute of `@ReadOperation` to achieve that.


[1]:

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This is the latest as of 12/27/2022. The below works.
-For application.yml config.

spring:
jackson:
serialization:
indent-output: true

But the above config won't work, if you implement WebMvcConfigurer class. In that case, override like below to make it work.

@Override
public void extendMessageConverters( List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> converters ) {
for ( HttpMessageConverter<?> converter : converters ) {
if ( converter instanceof MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) {
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter jacksonConverter = (MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) converter;
jacksonConverter.setPrettyPrint( true );
}
}
}

Spring Boot Actuator uses its own isolated `ObjectMapper` instance by default in which `indent-output` is disabled. To enable pretty-print of actuator output, you must set the following properties:

```
spring.jackson.serialization.indent-output=true
management.endpoints.jackson.isolated-object-mapper=false
```