What Is JSON?

JSON (pronounced as Jason), stands for "JavaScript Object Notation," is a human-readable and compact solution to represent a complex data structure and facilitate data interchange between systems. It's a widespread data format with a diverse range of applications enabled by its simplicity and semblance to readable text. As such, it's used by most but not all systems for communicating data.

Why Use JSON?

There are several reasons why you should consider using JSON, the key reason being that JSON is independent of your system's programming language, despite being derived from JavaScript. Not only is JSON language-independent, but it also represents data that speaks common elements of many programming languages, effectively making it into a universal data representation understood by all systems.

Other reasons include:

• Readability – JSON is human-readable, given proper formatting.
• Compactness – JSON data format doesn't use a complete markup structure, unlike XML.
• It's easy to analyze into logical syntactic components, especially in JavaScript.
• Countless JSON libraries are available for most programming languages.