If you don't want to install extensions, you can simply prepend the URL with view-source:, e.g. view-source:http://content.dimestore.com/prod/survey_data/4535/4535.json. This usually works in Firefox and Chrome (will still offer to download the file however if Content-Disposition: attachment header is present).

The loading of a .json file from a hard disk is an asynchronous operation, and thus it needs to specify a callback function to execute after the file is loaded.

function readTextFile(file, callback) {
    var rawFile = new XMLHttpRequest();
    rawFile.overrideMimeType("application/json");
    rawFile.open("GET", file, true);
    rawFile.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (rawFile.readyState === 4 && rawFile.status == "200") {
            callback(rawFile.responseText);
        }
    }
    rawFile.send(null);
}

//usage:
readTextFile("/Users/Documents/workspace/test.json", function(text){
    var data = JSON.parse(text);
    console.log(data);
});

This function also works for loading a .html or .txt files, by overriding the mime type parameter to "text/html", "text/plain", etc.

This would not be JSON anymore. But you can post-process the parsed JSON:

json.some_code = eval(json.some_code);

However this may be dangerous (script injection, etc).

So, if you can, do this instead:

json = { key1 : "val1", key2: "val2", elem: "someid", html:"test" };
document.getElementById(json.elem).innerHTML=json.html;

jQuery-1.7.1.js - 555 line...

parseJSON: function( data ) {
    if ( typeof data !== "string" || !data ) {
        return null;
    }

    // Make sure leading/trailing whitespace is removed (IE can't handle it)
    data = jQuery.trim( data );

    // Attempt to parse using the native JSON parser first
    if ( window.JSON && window.JSON.parse ) {
        return window.JSON.parse( data );
    }

    // Make sure the incoming data is actual JSON
    // Logic borrowed from http://json.org/json2.js
    if ( rvalidchars.test( data.replace( rvalidescape, "@" )
        .replace( rvalidtokens, "]" )
        .replace( rvalidbraces, "")) ) {

        return ( new Function( "return " + data ) )();

    }
    jQuery.error( "Invalid JSON: " + data );
}





rvalidchars = /^[\],:{}\s]*$/,

rvalidescape = /\\(?:["\\\/bfnrt]|u[0-9a-fA-F]{4})/g,

rvalidtokens = /"[^"\\\n\r]*"|true|false|null|-?\d+(?:\.\d*)?(?:[eE][+\-]?\d+)?/g,

rvalidbraces = /(?:^|:|,)(?:\s*\[)+/g,

I had the same need (to test my angularjs app), and the only way I found is to use require.js:

var json = require('./data.json'); //(with path)

note: the file is loaded once, further calls will use the cache.

More on reading files with nodejs: http://docs.nodejitsu.com/articles/file-system/how-to-read-files-in-nodejs

require.js: http://requirejs.org/