5 Great Free Software Development Tools
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Welcome to my first blog post! Since the goal of this blog is to provide a
variety of useful information and resources on Full-Stack development, what
better way to start off than with a post on great development tools? Seriously,
you can’t develop great software without great development tools! 
Online Dev Tools
This list contains online-based tools, or sites full of tools, for developers. Many of these focus on web-development, but many are useful regardless of the development you’re focusing on.
Be on the lookout for list items marked with
! These are the tools I use often and highly recommend.
JSONFormatter.org
While the JSON formatter is front and center, this website offers a huge list of other extremely useful tools. Those shown in the toolbar are just a small offering. While a few of the tools offered are similar to those offered elsewhere, this is my favorite site for these tools.
What you’ll find on JSONFormatter.org:
JSON Tools
- JSON Formatter
- JSON Validator
- JSON Editor
- JSON Pretty Print
- JSON Viewer
- JSON Parser
- JSON Minify
- JSON Reader
- JSON Stringify Online
Converters
- JSON to XML
- JSON to CSV
- JSON to YAML
- JSON to TSV
- JSON to String
- XML to JSON
- XML to CSV
- XML to YAML
- RSS to JSON
- YAML to JSON
- YAML to XML
- YAML to CSV
- CSV to JSON
- CSV to XML
- CSV to YAML
- CSV to HTML
HTML Tools
- HTML Formatter
- HTML Pretty Print
- HTML Validator
- HTML Viewer
- HTML Editor
- JSBeautifier
- HTML Minify
- JADE to HTML
- HTML to JADE
- EXCEL to HTML
Code Escaping Tools
- HTML Escape/Unescape
- XML Escape/Unescape
- Javascript Escape/Unescape
- Java Escape/Unescape
- .Net Escape/Unescape
- JSON Escape/Unescape
- CSV Escape/Unescape
- SQL Escape/Unescape
URL Encoding Tools
- URL Encode/Decode
- JSON URL Encode/Decode
- XML URL Encode/Decode
- YAML URL Encode/Decode
Base64 Encoders
- Base64 to JSON / JSON to Base64
- Base64 to XML / XML to Base64
- Base64 to YAML / YAML to Base64
CSS Converters
- Minify CSS
- CSS Beautifier
- CSS Formatter
- CSS Pretty Print
- CSS to LESS
- CSS to SCSS
- CSS to SASS
- CSS to Stylus
- Stylus to CSS
- Stylus to LESS
- Stylus to SCSS
- Stylus to SASS
- LESS to CSS
- LESS to SCSS
- LESS to SASS
- LESS to Stylus
- SCSS to CSS
- SCSS to LESS
- SCSS to SASS
- SCSS to Stylus
- SASS to CSS
- SASS to LESS
- SASS to SCSS
- SASS to Stylus
Data to Class - My Personal Favorites!
My Personal Favorites!
- JSON to Java
- JSON to Python
- JSON to Objective-C
- JSON to JSON Schema
- JSON to Swift
- JSON to C#
- JSON to Go
- JSON to Rust
- JSON to Crystal
- JSON to C++
- JSON to TypeScript
- JSON to JavaScript Proptypes
- JSON to Flow
- JSON to Kotlin
- JSON to Elm
- JSON to Ruby
- JSON to Dart
- JSON to Pike
- JSON to Haskell
- XML to Java
- XML to Python
- XML to Objective-C
- XML to JSON Schema
- XML to Swift
- XML to C#
- XML to Go
- XML to Rust
- XML to Crystal
- XML to C++
- XML to TypeScript
- XML to JavaScript Proptypes
- XML to Flow
- XML to Kotlin
- XML to Elm
- XML to Ruby
- XML to Dart
- XML to Pike
- XML to Haskell
Online Formatters
- JSON Formatter
- JSON5 Formatter
- XML Formatter
- HTML Formatter
- YAML Formatter
- JavaScript Formatter
- CSS Formatter
- C# Formatter
- Java Formatter
- GraphQL Formatter
- Angular Formatter
- Vue JS Formatter
- LESS Formatter
- SCSS Formatter
- TypeScript Formatter
- Babel Formatter
- Markdown Formatter
- MDX Formatter
- Glimmer JS Formatter
- LWC Formatter
- PHP Formatter
JSON to TypeScript JSON to PythonI use these tools often when designing programs/interfaces that consume JSON REST API responses. Utilizing these tools allow you to transform JSON objects to TypeScript Interfaces or Python classes, respectively. You may need to make a few tweaks, but they will still save you a ton of time.
Tools.FromDev
Tools.FromDev is a great, and super easy to navigate, site with a variety of useful tools. It is also open source on GitHub, so check it out, fork it, and contribute!
What you’ll find on Tools.FromDev
While there are many tools on Tools.FromDev, I am going to list the ones I believe to be the most useful, but feel free to check them all out.
String Utility Tools
- HTML, JavaScript, and XML Escape Tools - Some characters have special meaning in HTML, JavaScript, and XML. Use this tool to "escape" those characters in order to use them within their respective languages.
- URL Encode | Decode - Similar to the escape tools, this tool transforms URLs into strings that won't confuse a server.
- Change Case - Change the case of strings to and from lowercase, uppercase, and camel-case.
- Remove Stopwords - Remove stopwords to assist with machine learning and natural language processing.
Converters
- CSV / JSON
- CSV / HTML
- HTML Table / JSON
- XML / JSON
- JSON / Property
- HTML Link Extractor - Want to extract all links from a webpage, but don't have time to do it programatically? Try this out!
- Create HTML Link - Generate a proper HTML link tag with data.
- Text to HTML List - Generate a properly formatted list for use in HTML markup.
- Image to Base-64
- HEIC to JPG, JPEG, PNG or GIF
https://tools.fromdev.com/csv-to-json-converter.htmlIf you're given test/mock data in CSV format, but you need it to be in JSON format to truly utilize/test it, then look no further than this converter!
dbdiagram.io
Before a coworker showed me this site, I used MermaidJS or PlantUML to design database diagrams. However, this site not only allows you to export your diagram as an image or pdf, but it also allows you to integrate with your database and generate sql!
ScreenShot.Rocks
ScreenShot.Rocks is a great online tool, especially for bloggers. I actually used ScreenShot.Rocks in this post, as you may have noticed from the image captions. All you have to do is enter the URL of the site you wish to create a screenshot for, and ScreenShot.Rocks does the rest. If you’d like, you can even edit the style, browser, and media type used to display the screenshot.
X-Team Radio
X-Team Radio is a great free online radio catered towards programmers. X-Team is a fully remote software development company. They publish a great weekly newsletter and also provide this awesome radio! You can even change the theme (My fav is the Witcher theme) and chat with other listeners if you like. Oh, and yes, I do consider this to be a productivity tool, because how better to get into the zone and get some work done than to listen to some awesome tunes?
Final Thoughts
So there you have it; Five great development tool sites. Are there any other tools that you’d like to see on this list? Any comments, concerns, suggestions, or requests? Please leave a comment below, or feel free to contact me via one of the links under my “About Me.” Thanks for reading, and stay tuned; There is more where this came from!