JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

What is JSON? JSON Explained

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a lightweight data interchange format that is widely used for storing and exchanging structured data between systems. It is a text-based format that is easy for humans to read and write and is also easy for machines to parse and generate.

It is built on two primary data structures:

Objects: An object in this format is an unordered collection of key-value pairs, enclosed in curly braces {}. The keys are strings, and the values can be any valid JSON data type, including strings, numbers, booleans, null, arrays, or nested objects.

Example:

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{
“name": “John Doe",
“age": 30,
“isStudent": false
}
Arrays: An array here is an ordered collection of values, enclosed in square brackets []. The values can be any valid JSON data type, including objects, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans, or null.

Example:

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[ “apple", “banana", “orange"]
JSON supports the following data types:

Strings: Enclosed in double quotes (“) and can contain Unicode characters. Escape sequences, such as n for newline or " for a double quote within a string, are also supported.

Numbers: Integers or floating-point numbers, similar to their representation in programming languages.

Booleans: Represented as either true or false.

Null: Represented as null, indicating the absence of a value.

JSON provides a simple and widely adopted syntax for representing complex data structures. It is language-independent and can be used with various programming languages. It is commonly used for data serialization and transmission in web applications, APIs, and configuration files.

Parsing and generating this format data in programming languages is straightforward, as most modern programming languages provide built-in support for working with JSON. Its data can be converted to native data types in a programming language and vice versa.

For example, in JavaScript, you can parse a JSON string into a JavaScript object using the JSON.parse() method, and you can convert a JavaScript object into a JSON string using the JSON.stringify() method.

It has become a de facto standard for data exchange due to its simplicity, readability, and compatibility with a wide range of platforms and programming languages.