JSON to exchange objects between different languages

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a format for data exchange between the browser and the server. Its syntax is similar to an associative array in JavaScript. En fait le format défini en 2002 a été basé sur un sous-ensemble de la spécification ECMA-252 du language.

Example of JSON file: 

{
   "menu": "Files",
   "commands": 
   [
    {
     "title": "New",
     "action":"create"
    },  
    { 
     "title": "Open",
     "action": "open"
    },
    { 
     "title": "Quit",
     "action": "exit"
    }
   ]
}

This file is the representation of a menu, the article provides a demonstration of its use.

The XML representation:

<menu label="Files">
  <menulist>
    <command label="New" command="create" />
    <command label="Open"  command="open"/>
    <command label="Quit"  command="exit" />
  </menulist>
</menu>

The XML version is easier to read, but for the computer, the advantage is to JSON: lighter, easier to parse, similar to a JavaScript object.

The format recognizes the same types of data as JavaScript: Number, String, Boolean, Array, Object, null.
Number, String, Boolean, and null are primitives that can be assigned to a key that must be a string.
Array is a list of key-values ​​in square brackets.
Object is a list of key-values ​​in braces.

Our example is an object that contains an array. The numerical values ​​are stored as is, while the strings are always quoted.

How to use JSON

A JSON file is read on the server through a parser. A parser exists for most common programming languages.
In a web page, simply give the contents of the file as an argument to the eval() function to return an array or an object directly usable by JavaScript. 

var x = eval('(' + xhr.responseText + ')');

For example, the content assigned to the  responseText attribute of the XMLHttpRequest object in an Ajax request can become an object in a program.

Before assigning an object in JavaScript with the eval function, it is recommended to purge the content with a regular expression to avoid a possible injection of malicious code.

var doc = xhr.responseText;
var obj = !(/[^,:{}\[\]0-9.\-+Eaeflnr-u \n\r\t]/.
   test( doc.replace(/"(\\.|[^"\\])*"/g, ''))) && eval('(' + doc + ')');

This code was given in RFC 4627.

There are JSON parsers for all languages ​​running on the server side, it is so possible to exchange objects between a JavaScript application and the backend.

Since PHP 5.2, the JSON extension is part of the default installation. It offers he function  json_decode and json_encode which respectively convert a string to an object or an object to a string, the string form allowing to store the object in a file or transmit it to a JavaScript application.

JSON, JavaScript and PHP

Alternative formats

JSON or XML are two formats used to exchange data with a server, throught Ajax of otherwise.
Other formats include YAML, more comprehensive but also more complex and Protocol Buffers created by Google for its servers.
The latter fits better in languages other than JavaScript because, from a prototype that describes the data (that would be lines of menu in our example), the compiler creates classes in C or Java to access the data. But it is better for static data.

More information