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screenjson

screenjson-cli

Round-trip FDX → JSON → FDX

Take a Final Draft file, convert it to ScreenJSON, and export back to a new Final Draft file to verify structural fidelity.

Last updated January 2026

Why round-trip?

Round-tripping is the cheapest way to sanity-check a converter. If A.fdx → A.json → A2.fdx produces an A2.fdx that Final Draft opens and that renders identically, your conversion is clean.

Commands

# 1. Convert
screenjson convert -i original.fdx -o step1.json

# 2. Validate
screenjson validate -i step1.json --strict

# 3. Export back
screenjson export -i step1.json -f fdx -o roundtripped.fdx

# 4. Re-convert to confirm stability
screenjson convert -i roundtripped.fdx -o step2.json

# 5. Diff the two ScreenJSON documents
diff <(jq -S . step1.json) <(jq -S . step2.json)

The only differences you should see across re-parses are UUIDs (if the CLI mints new ones on the second convert) and timestamps.

In a script

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
src="$1"
name="$(basename "$src" .fdx)"
screenjson convert -i "$src"                 -o "${name}.json"
screenjson validate -i "${name}.json"        --strict
screenjson export   -i "${name}.json" -f fdx -o "${name}-rt.fdx"
echo "OK — ${name}-rt.fdx"

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