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 plain text format. With time, XML documents became heavier, and the overhead was not worth it.
JSON solved this problem by providing a structure with minimal overhead. Some people call JSON fat-free XML.
JSON's 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" : 56)
Boolean ("alive": true)
null ("manager" : null)
- Data is delimited by commas
- Curly braces
{}
represents an object:
{ "firstName" : "Bill", "lastName": "Clinton", "age": 70 }
- Square brackets
[]
represent an array:
[{ "firstName" : "Bill", "lastName": "Clinton", "age": 70 } {"firstName": "Barack","lastName": "Obama...