The full form of JSON is JavaScript Object Notation.
JSON or JavaScript Object Notation is a free file format used to send and receive human-readable text. It is read as JSON in short form. It stores all its data in the form of arrays. It is a very common data format that is sent or received by a browser or server. With its use, the use of XML has also started decreasing in AJAX.
History of JSON
The need for JSON was felt when people had to exchange information from server to browser at the same time. This was previously only possible through some plugins, which include Flash and Java applets. Many people did not use such plugins, but without plugins such facilities were not available and hence the need for it started to be felt.
Douglas Crockford created and promoted the first JSON Format. It started as State Software, originally named Well Networks Inc. The company was founded in March 2001 by Crockford along with Randy Farmer, Greg McDonald, Chip Morningstar, Robert Napiltonia and Dominic Janis. Tesla Ventures donated $1.8 million to it in October 2011.
Data Types and Examples
The information below is information about an individual, displayed in JSON format.
{
"name": "John Doe",
"age": 30,
"email": "johndoe@example.com",
"isSubscribed": true,
"address": {
"street": "123 Main St",
"city": "Cityville",
"zipCode": "12345"
},
"hobbies": ["Reading", "Hiking", "Cooking"]
}
Media Type
Its official media type is "application/json", which has been adopted in many modern use cases. Although it was previously unofficially used as "text/json" or "text/javascript" as the content type. But even after getting the official version, it is being used in many service providers, browsers, servers, web apps and other types of APIs etc. Some notable examples of this include Google Search, Yahoo, Flickr, Facebook, Lift Framework, Dojo Toolkit 0.4, etc.