JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript programming language. JSON's popularity is directly related to XML getting unpopular. XML was a great solution to provide a structure to the data in a plain text format. With time, XML documents became more and more heavy and the overhead was not worth it.
JSON solved this problem by providing structure with minimal overhead. Some people call JSON fat-free XML.
The JSON syntax follows these rules:
Data is in the form of key-value pairs:
"firstName" : "Bill"
There are four datatypes in JSON:
String ("firstName" : "Barack")
Number ("age" : 53)
Boolean ("alive": true)
null ("manager" : null)
Data is delimited by commas
Curly braces {} represents an object:
{ "firstName" : "Bill", "lastName": "Clinton", "age": 68 }Square brackets [] represent an array:
[{ "firstName" : "Bill", "lastName": "Clinton", "age": 68 },{"firstName": "Barack","lastName": "Obama", "age": 43}]
In this...