Staaarter Tools

JSON Value Extractor

Recursively scans a JSON document and lists every leaf (non-object, non-array) value it finds, one per line, useful for quickly reviewing all the actual data in a document without its structure. A free online tool from Staaarter, right in your browser.

Runs locallyUpdated 2026-07-22
inspectionstructured-data

Overview

Introduction

Sometimes the structure of a JSON document doesn't matter as much as simply seeing every value it contains, checking for a specific string, scanning for outliers, or getting a quick sense of the data's range.

This tool strips away all the keys and nesting and gives you a flat list of every actual value in the document.

What Is JSON Value Extractor?

A value extractor that recursively visits every object and array in a JSON document and collects every leaf value (strings, numbers, booleans, null) into a flat list, one per line.

Unlike key extraction, values are not deduplicated, since repeated values are frequently meaningful.

How JSON Value Extractor Works

The tool recursively walks the parsed JSON value: objects are traversed by their property values, arrays by their items, and once a scalar leaf is reached, its string representation is appended to the output list.

The final list preserves the depth-first traversal order of the original document.

When To Use JSON Value Extractor

Use it to quickly scan for a specific value's presence anywhere in a large document without knowing its exact key path.

It's also useful for pulling a flat list of values, IDs, statuses, tags, out of a nested API response for further processing elsewhere.

Often used alongside JSON Key Extractor, JSON Object Flattener and JSON to Text Converter.

Features

Advantages

  • Surfaces every value regardless of how deeply it's nested.
  • Preserves repeated values rather than silently deduplicating them.
  • Simple, single-column output that's easy to paste elsewhere or search through.

Limitations

  • Doesn't indicate which key or path each value came from.
  • Can produce a very long list for large documents with many leaf values.

Examples

Extracting values from nested data

Input

{"user":{"name":"Ada","address":{"city":"London"}},"active":true}

Output

Ada
London
true

Every leaf value across the document is listed, regardless of nesting depth, while the keys themselves are omitted.

Best Practices & Notes

Best Practices

  • Use Flatten a JSON Object instead if you need to know which key each value belongs to.
  • For large documents, extract a sub-object first if you only care about one section's values.
  • Combine with a text search over the output to quickly confirm whether a specific value exists anywhere in the document.

Developer Notes

Values are pushed into a plain array rather than a Set, since deduplicating here would discard meaningful information, unlike key names, the same value appearing many times (e.g. a repeated status field) is itself often the signal being looked for.

JSON Value Extractor Use Cases

  • Scanning a large API response for the presence of a specific value
  • Pulling a flat list of IDs, tags, or statuses out of nested JSON
  • Getting a quick sense of the range of values present in a dataset

Common Mistakes

  • Expecting duplicate values to be collapsed; every occurrence is listed intentionally.
  • Losing track of which key a given value came from, since paths aren't included in this output.
  • Running this on a very large document and getting an unwieldy list; narrow the input first if possible.

Tips

  • Use your browser's find-in-page (Ctrl/Cmd+F) on the output to quickly check whether a value exists anywhere in the document.
  • Pair with Extract JSON Keys to get a full picture of both the vocabulary and the data of a document.

References

Frequently Asked Questions