JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects. It's widely used for data exchange between web applications and servers, API responses, configuration files, and data storage.
Technical Details
JSON represents data with key-value pairs in a nested structure. It supports strings, numbers, booleans, arrays, objects, and null values, making it flexible for various data types. JSON is language-independent but derived from JavaScript syntax, making it particularly popular in web development. JSON files use the .json extension and have a MIME type of application/json.
Advantages
- Supports complex, nested data structures
- Native support in JavaScript and most modern programming languages
- Self-describing and human-readable
- Compact compared to XML and other structured formats
- Language-independent and widely adopted as a standard
- Perfect for API responses and data transfer
- No special parsing tools needed - standard in most programming languages
Limitations
- Not ideal for tabular data analysis
- No support for comments or metadata
- Can be verbose for large datasets
- No schema validation built into the format itself
- Nested structures can be difficult to analyze in spreadsheet tools
- Converting to tabular formats requires flattening of nested objects