CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jsonrestrestful-architecture
Hai Pham
Hai Pham

Reputation: 173

Restful: is there any case we should use xml over json

Json is better than xml for sure, i was wondering if there is any case we should use xml instead of json

Upvotes: 0

Views: 58

Answers (2)

Evert
Evert

Reputation: 99495

XML has been around for a long time, and there's a lot of tools in place that JSON does not yet have, are not commonplace or ubiquitous.

XML has XSchema, RelaxNG, DTD. JSON does have an equivalent but it's not as common place.

XML has namespacing, which is great for mixing different document types. JSON does have some ideas on how to do namespacing (such as JSON-LD) but doing this correctly tends to take why people tend to enjoy JSON over XML for.

Namespacing in XML is everywhere, which gives you a very standard framework to re-use existing XML schemas for integration.

So I don't want to say, "you should do XML" or "you should do JSON", but I would rather say that if you need to integrate with existing XML systems, or you needs would strongly benefit from features such as namespacing, schemas, linking, re-use of existing XML documents, XSLT, etc... XML might be a better choice.

Upvotes: 0

ioseb
ioseb

Reputation: 16941

If speaking in terms of REST, neither is better. Plain XML or plain JSON does not say anything about data transferred in either format. Though if you use well known formats like:

  • application/atom+xml
  • application/vnd.collection+json

comparison will boil down to which format suits your needs better.

If you compare XML to JSON from programming language perspective, yes XML adds extra layer between code and data, though nothing special. Oh and XML is little verbose and larger in terms of bytes.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions