code: def jsonFormat(output, statDict = None, query = None, pretty = False):
    
    statDict = statDict or scales.getStats()
    if query:
      statDict = runQuery(statDict, query)
    indent = 2 if pretty else None
    # At first, assume that strings are in UTF-8. If this fails -- if, for example, we have
    # crazy binary data -- then in order to get *something* out, we assume ISO-8859-1,
    # which maps each byte to a unicode code point.
    try:
      serialized = json.dumps(statDict, cls=scales.StatContainerEncoder, indent=indent)
    except UnicodeDecodeError:
      serialized = json.dumps(statDict, cls=scales.StatContainerEncoder, indent=indent, encoding='iso-8859-1')
  
    output.write(serialized)
    output.write('\n')
docs: Formats as JSON, writing to the given object.