YAML Docker Compose — Convert to JSON

Example docker-compose.yml

version: "3.9"
services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    depends_on:
      - db
    environment:
      NGINX_HOST: example.com
  db:
    image: postgres:15
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: secret
volumes:
  pgdata:

This file converts to a structured JSON object with services, volumes, and networks correctly nested.

Common use cases

• Debug a complex docker-compose.yml by inspecting its parsed JSON structure.
• Validate against a JSON Schema to catch errors before deployment.
• Integrate the config into an IaC tool that expects JSON input.
• Compare two Compose file versions with a JSON diff.
• Generate automated documentation from the config structure.

Docker Compose YAML specifics

• Quoted ports: "80:80" in quotes to prevent YAML from interpreting it as a sexagesimal integer.
• Environment variables: can be list or mapping format — both are supported.
• Named volumes: defined with empty values (pgdata:) become null in JSON — this is expected behavior.
• Extensions (x-): Docker Compose extension keys are converted as regular keys.