Newline Delimited JSON

A stream-ready format that stores individual JSON objects on separate lines for efficient, incremental processing.

NDJSON eliminates the memory bottlenecks of standard JSON arrays by separating records with a newline character (\n). This layout enables incremental parsing (processing files one line at a time) which is essential for massive datasets like server logs or database exports. Tools like jq or Spark handle these streams efficiently: you can read a 50GB file without loading it all into RAM. It provides a robust alternative to CSV for structured data while maintaining Unix-friendly readability.

https://github.com/ndjson/ndjson-spec