Data File Viewer

View and explore binary data files directly in VS Code (and compatible editors like Cursor).

What's New in 2.0

The Data File Viewer is now an interactive explorer & profiler. Beyond the original JSON view, you now get sortable tables for tabular data, 2-D grids for arrays with profiling statistics (shape, dtype, min/max/mean/std, distribution histograms), hierarchical tree navigation for complex files (HDF5, NetCDF, MATLAB), and CSV export for your results. The original Raw JSON view is preserved as a tab for every file type.

Supported File Types

• .pkl / .pickle - Python Pickle files
• .h5 / .hdf5 - HDF5 files
• .parquet - Apache Parquet files
• .feather - Apache Feather files
• .joblib / .jl - Scikit-learn Joblib files
• .npy / .npz - NumPy array files
• .msgpack / .mp - MessagePack files
• .arrow - Apache Arrow files
• .avro - Apache Avro files
• .nc / .nc4 - NetCDF files
• .mat - MATLAB files

Features

• 🔍 Explore structure - Navigate nested data hierarchies
• 📊 Preview data - View arrays, dataframes, and objects
• 🔒 Safe viewing - Read-only access to your data files
• 🎨 Syntax highlighting - Clear visualization of data types
• ⚡ Fast loading - Efficient handling of large files
• 🎯 Simplify view - Toggle between detailed and simplified JSON views
• 📋 Copy to clipboard - Easily copy JSON data
• 🔄 Collapse/Expand - Control JSON view depth

Usage

Simply click on any supported file in your workspace. The extension will automatically open it in a custom viewer.

Security Note

⚠️ Pickle files warning: Opening .pkl and .joblib files executes Python code during deserialization. Only open pickle files from trusted sources.

Requirements

Python 3.7 or higher must be installed on your system.

First-Time Setup

When you first open a data file, the extension will:

1. Automatically create its own isolated Python environment
2. Ask permission to install required packages (one-time setup)
3. Install packages in its own environment (doesn't affect your global Python!)

That's it! The setup takes ~2-3 minutes the first time, then works forever.

Why This Approach?

• ✅ Isolated: Doesn't pollute your global Python packages
• ✅ Persistent: Packages installed once, work everywhere
• ✅ Clean: Uninstall the extension = removes everything
• ✅ No conflicts: Won't interfere with your projects

Extension Settings

Currently, this extension works out of the box with no configuration needed.

Known Issues

• Very large files (>1GB) may take time to load
• Some custom pickle objects may not serialize to JSON properly

Release notes are in CHANGELOG.md

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Found a bug or have a feature request? Please open an issue on GitHub.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

Support

If you find this extension useful, please:

• Star the repository on GitHub
• Leave a review on the VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX
• Report bugs or suggest features
• Contribute code or documentation