In the previous chapter, you were introduced to the REST architectural style. Remember that REST does not prescribe any specific message format for client-server communication. One can use an appropriate format for representing messages as long as the chosen format is supported by HTTP. XML and JSON are the two most popular formats used by RESTful web services today. Out of these two formats, JSON has been widely adopted by many vendors because of it is simple and lightweight. In this chapter, you will learn more about the JSON message format and various processing tools and frameworks related to JSON.

The following topics are covered in this chapter: