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

Asking for purpose, there are different answers:

Using JSON to serialize objects (JavaScriptObjectNotation), each dictionary element maps to an indivual object property, so different entries defining a value for the same property has no meaning.

However, I came over the same question from a very specific use case: Writing JSON samples for API testing, I was wondering how to add comments into our JSON file without breaking the usability. The JSON spec does not know comments, so I came up with a very simple approach:

To use duplicate keys to comment our JSON samples. Example:

{ "property1" : "value1", "REMARK" : "... prop1 controls ...", "property2" : "value2", "REMARK" : "... value2 raises an exception ...", }

The JSON serializers which we are using have no problems with these "REMARK" duplicates and our application code simply ignores this little overhead.

So, even though there is no meaning on the application layer, these duplicates for us provide a valuable workaround to add comments to our testing samples without breaking the usability of the JSON.