- [Instructor] JSON is a popular format
used for sharing data online.
The name is short for JavaScript Object Notation.
JSON syntax is based on the JavaScript language,
but you don't need to know JavaScript in order to use JSON.
In fact, one of the reasons JSON is so popular
is that you can use it in conjunction with most
any programming language.
JSON is widely used in a variety of common data
exchange situations,
including API requests and responses,
and application configuration files.
Before JSON was created,
extensible markup language or XML,
was a popular choice, but JSON quickly grew to eclipse XML,
especially on the web because of a few key advantages.
One of JSON's advantages is that
it's pretty easy for humans to read.
For instance, this is one way to encode basic information
about the country of Thailand in JSON and in XML.
Both of these structures contain the same information,
country name, capital, and area.
But XML contains more extraneous characters
and repeats the data label in both opening and closing tags.
This not only creates a visual clutter
that interferes with human readability,
but it also increases the number of characters
required to encode the same data.
Meaning that XML data generally requires more bytes.
This is a critical difference online
because fewer bytes means a large file
can be downloaded more quickly
and browsers can display website content faster.
Human readability and file size are two of the reasons
that JSON has come to dominate
data encoding on the web today.
And that makes JSON an important syntax to understand
for a wide range of roles that work with data.
From computer programming to software configuration,
to data analytics and reporting.