JSON.stringify versus serialization

Question

Is JSON.stringify( ) equivalent to serialization or effectively serialization or is it just a necessary step towards serialization?

In other words, is

Answer 1

Old question, but the following information may be useful for posterity.

Of course, you can serialise any way you want, including any number of custom methods, but JSON has become an increasingly popular method.

The most obvious benefit of JSON is that it represents objects in the same way that JavaScript object literals do, though it is slightly less flexible. Nevertheless, if you can represent normal data in JavaScript then JSON is a good match.

The most significant feature is that, since it represents objects as well as arrays, it can represent fairly complex & hierarchical data.

For one reason or another, JSON has more-or-less supplanted XML as the preferred serialisation for sending data between the server and browser. It is so useful that many languages include their own JSON functions (PHP, for example, has the better named json_encode & json_decode functions), as do some modern Databases. I myself have found it convenient to use JSON functions to store a more complex data structure in a single field of a database without JavaScript anywhere in sight).

The short answer is yes, for the most part it is a sufficient step to serializing most data (non-binary). It is not, however, necessary as there are alternatives.

Serializing binary data, on the other hand, now that’s another story …