What is JSON and why would I use it?

Question

I\'ve looked on wikipedia and Googled it and read the official documentation, but I still haven\'t got to the point where I really understand what JSON is, and why I\'d use

Answer 1

In short, it is a scripting notation for passing data about. In some ways an alternative to XML, natively supporting basic data types, arrays and associative arrays (name-value pairs, called Objects because that is what they represent).

The syntax is that used in JavaScript and JSON itself stands for "JavaScript Object Notation". However it has become portable and is used in other languages too.

A useful link for detail is here:

http://secretgeek.net/json_3mins.asp

Answer 2

Understanding JSON

JSON is just a text format that most REST APIs use to return their data. Another common format is XML, but XML is quite a bit more verbose.

Here’s a small example of JSON:

// JSON object
{
  "name": "John",
  "age": 20
}

// JSON array
[
  {
    "name": "John",
    "age": 20
  },
  {
    "name": "Peter",
    "age": 22
  }
]

Notice that the snippet starts with a brace {, which indicates an object. JSON can also start as an array, which uses the square bracket [ symbol to signify the start of the array. JSON needs to be properly formatted, so all beginning { and [ symbols need to have their ending symbols: } and ].

JSON can contain object or array. An object in JSON is wrapped inside the braces { … }, while an array is wrapped inside square brackets [ … ].

JSON structures data by key-value. Key is always a string, but value could be anything (String, number, JSON object, JSON array…). This will affect the way we parse JSON in the next steps.

Answer 3

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight format that is used for data interchanging. It is based on a subset of JavaScript language (the way objects are built in JavaScript). As stated in the MDN, some JavaScript is not JSON, and some JSON is not JavaScript.

An example of where this is used is web services responses. In the 'old' days, web services used XML as their primary data format for transmitting back data, but since JSON appeared (The JSON format is specified in RFC 4627 by Douglas Crockford), it has been the preferred format because it is much more lightweight

You can find a lot more info on the official JSON web site.

JSON is built on two structures:

• A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or associative array.
• An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an array, vector, list, or sequence.

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JSON Structure

Here is an example of JSON data:

{
     "firstName": "John",
     "lastName": "Smith",
     "address": {
         "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street",
         "city": "New York",
         "state": "NY",
         "postalCode": 10021
     },
     "phoneNumbers": [
         "212 555-1234",
         "646 555-4567"
     ]
 }

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JSON in JavaScript

JSON (in Javascript) is a string!

People often assume all Javascript objects are JSON and that JSON is a Javascript object. This is incorrect.

In Javascript var x = {x:y} is not JSON, this is a Javascript object. The two are not the same thing. The JSON equivalent (represented in the Javascript language) would be var x = '{"x":"y"}'. x is an object of type string not an object in it's own right. To turn this into a fully fledged Javascript object you must first parse it, var x = JSON.parse('{"x":"y"}');, x is now an object but this is not JSON anymore.

See Javascript object Vs JSON

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When working with JSON and JavaScript, you may be tempted to use the eval function to evaluate the result returned in the callback, but this is not suggested since there are two characters (U+2028 & U+2029) valid in JSON but not in JavaScript (read more of this here).

Therefore, one must always try to use Crockford's script that checks for a valid JSON before evaluating it. Link to the script explanation is found here and here is a direct link to the js file. Every major browser nowadays has its own implementation for this.

Example on how to use the JSON parser (with the json from the above code snippet):

//The callback function that will be executed once data is received from the server
var callback = function (result) {
    var johnny = JSON.parse(result);
    //Now, the variable 'johnny' is an object that contains all of the properties 
    //from the above code snippet (the json example)
    alert(johnny.firstName + ' ' + johnny.lastName); //Will alert 'John Smith'
};

The JSON parser also offers another very useful method, stringify. This method accepts a JavaScript object as a parameter, and outputs back a string with JSON format. This is useful for when you want to send data back to the server:

var anObject = {name: "Andreas", surname : "Grech", age : 20};
var jsonFormat = JSON.stringify(anObject);
//The above method will output this: {"name":"Andreas","surname":"Grech","age":20}

The above two methods (parse and stringify) also take a second parameter, which is a function that will be called for every key and value at every level of the final result, and each value will be replaced by result of your inputted function. (More on this here)

Btw, for all of you out there who think JSON is just for JavaScript, check out this post that explains and confirms otherwise.

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References

• JSON.org
• Wikipedia
• Json in 3 minutes (Thanks mson)
• Using JSON with Yahoo! Web Services (Thanks gljivar)
• JSON to CSV Converter
• Alternative JSON to CSV Converter
• JSON Lint (JSON validator)

Answer 4

In short - JSON is a way of serializing in such a way, that it becomes JavaScript code. When executed (with eval or otherwise), this code creates and returns a JavaScript object which contains the data you serialized. This is available because JavaScript allows the following syntax:

var MyArray = [ 1, 2, 3, 4]; // MyArray is now an array with 4 elements
var MyObject = {
    'StringProperty' : 'Value',
    'IntProperty' : 12,
    'ArrayProperty' : [ 1, 2, 3],
    'ObjectProperty' : { 'SubObjectProperty': 'SomeValue' }
}; // MyObject is now an object with property values set.

You can use this for several purposes. For one, it's a comfortable way to pass data from your server backend to your JavaScript code. Thus, this is often used in AJAX.

You can also use it as a standalone serialization mechanism, which is simpler and takes up less space than XML. Many libraries exists that allow you to serialize and deserialize objects in JSON for various programming languages.

Answer 5

In the Java context, one reason why JSON might want to be used, is that it provides a very good alternative to Java's Serialization framework, which has been shown (historically) to be subject to some fairly serious vulnerabilities.

Joshua Bloch discusses this in depth in Item 85 "Prefer Alternatives to Java Serialization" (Effective Java 3rd Edition)

Java's Serialization was initially meant to translate data structures into a format that could be easily transmitted or stored. JSON meets this requirement, without the serious exploits referred to above.

Answer 6

JSON is JavaScript Object Notation. It is a much-more compact way of transmitting sets of data across network connections as compared to XML. I suggest JSON be used in any AJAX-like applications where XML would otherwise be the "recommended" option. The verbosity of XML will add to download time and increased bandwidth consumption ($$$). You can accomplish the same effect with JSON and its mark-up is almost exclusively dedicated to the data itself and not the underlying structure.