Properties to JSON Converter
Convert Java .properties files to JSON online. Reconstructs nested objects and arrays from dot-notation keys — all in your browser.
Features
☕ Faithful .properties Parsing
- Dot-notation keys rebuilt into nested objects
- Numeric segments reconstructed as arrays
#and!comment styles supported- Unicode escapes (
\uXXXX) decoded
⚡ Privacy-First
- All parsing happens in your browser
- No data ever sent to a server
- Pairs with our JSON to Properties converter
- Download or copy the resulting JSON instantly
🌱 Spring Boot Migration
- Inspect an
application.propertiesas structured JSON - Convert to
application.ymlvia our other tools - Compare config across environments as JSON
- Optional automatic number/boolean detection
Properties to JSON Guide
Java .properties files are flat by design — a plain list of key=value pairs, with dot-notation (database.host=localhost) as the community convention for expressing structure. Reading a large application.properties file line by line to understand its actual shape is tedious, especially once a project has accumulated dozens of dotted keys from different modules and Spring Boot auto-configuration classes. This tool splits each dotted key back apart and rebuilds the nested JSON object it represents, so you can see the real structure at a glance — the same reverse operation our JSON to Properties tool performs in the other direction.
Keys with consecutive numeric segments (features.0, features.1) are automatically detected and reassembled into a JSON array rather than an object with string-numeric keys — the same convention Spring's @ConfigurationProperties binder uses for list-typed configuration fields.
Frequently Asked Questions
What comment styles are supported?
Both # and ! are valid comment markers in the .properties format (a historical quirk from Java's original spec), and this converter strips full-line comments starting with either character.
Are Unicode escape sequences decoded?
Yes — .properties files are traditionally ASCII-only, so non-ASCII characters are written as \uXXXX escapes (e.g. café for "café"). This converter decodes those back to their actual Unicode characters in the resulting JSON.
What happens to numbers and booleans?
With "Infer types" enabled, values that look like integers, decimals, or true/false convert to their JSON equivalents. Since every .properties value is technically just a string, disable this option if you need exact string preservation for values like version numbers.
Does it support the key:value and key value separator styles?
Yes — the .properties spec allows =, :, or plain whitespace to separate a key from its value, and this parser recognizes all three, checking for the first unescaped occurrence of any of them on each line.