Does JSON syntax allow duplicate keys in an object?

Question

Is this valid json?

{
    \"a\" : \"x\",
    \"a\" : \"y\"
}

http://jsonlint.com/ says yes.

http://www.json.org/ doesn\'t say anyth

Answer 1

I came across a similar question when dealing with an API that accepts both XML and JSON, but doesn't document how it would handle what you'd expect to be duplicate keys in the JSON accepted.

The following is a valid XML representation of your sample JSON:

When this is converted into JSON, you get the following:

{
  "object": {
    "a": [
      "x",
      "y"
    ]
  }
}

A natural mapping from a language that handles what you might call duplicate keys to another, can serve as a potential best practice reference here.

Hope that helps someone!