CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jsonweb-applications
chromedude
chromedude

Reputation: 4302

What is JSON used for in web applications?

I am relatively new to web development and web applications. I have heard about JSON but am not sure exactly what its uses are.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 6603

Answers (3)

pjama
pjama

Reputation: 3044

First, it's an acronym for JavaScript Object Notation.

It is often used in places where applications deal with object data structures (often seen in languages such as Java, C#, etc.), and associative arrays (key-value pairs seen in many languages such as Python, PHP, etc.)

To answer your question, it's a simple and efficient way to encode objects into strings, transfer them, and recreate the objects on the other end.

JSON on Wikipedia

JSON Homepage

Example of JSON encoding in PHP

Upvotes: 1

user124626
user124626

Reputation:

JSON is a format for encoding information returned by the server. When you call a script with AJAX/XHR (e.g. with JavaScript) the returned information can come via XML, JSON, or another format. JSON is simply a way to return that data in an object structure native to JavaScript - in a way that generally doesn't require a lot of parsing, like XML does.

Upvotes: 9

freakish
freakish

Reputation: 56467

It is a kind of language for encoding information. For example, if you want to send information about person from one place to another, then it JSON it may look like this:

{
     "firstName": "John",
     "lastName": "Smith",
     "age": 25,
     "address":
     {
         "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street",
         "city": "New York",
         "state": "NY",
         "postalCode": "10021"
     },
     "phoneNumber":
     [
         {
           "type": "home",
           "number": "212 555-1234"
         },
         {
           "type": "fax",
           "number": "646 555-4567"
         }
     ]
 }

Taken from wiki. :) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON for more details.

Upvotes: 4

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