JSON in JavaScript

Douglas Crockford

douglas@crockford.com

2010-11-18

JSON is a light-weight, language independent, data interchange format.

See http://www.JSON.org/

The files in this collection implement JSON encoders/decoders in JavaScript.

JSON became a built-in feature of JavaScript when the ECMAScript Programming

Language Standard - Fifth Edition was adopted by the ECMA General Assembly

in December 2009. Most of the files in this collection are for applications 

that are expected to run in obsolete web browsers. For most purposes, json2.js 

is the best choice.

json2.js: This file creates a JSON property in the global object, if there 

isn't already one, setting its value to an object containing a stringify

method and a parse method. The parse method uses the eval method to do the

parsing, guarding it with several regular expressions to defend against

accidental code execution hazards. On current browsers, this file does nothing,

prefering the built-in JSON object.

json.js: This file does everything that json2.js does. It also adds a

toJSONString method and a parseJSON method to Object.prototype. Use of this

file is not recommended.

json_parse.js: This file contains an alternative JSON parse function that

uses recursive descent instead of eval.

json_parse_state: This files contains an alternative JSON parse function that

uses a state machine instead of eval.

cycle.js: This file contains two functions, JSON.decycle and JSON.retrocycle,

which make it possible to encode cyclical structures and dags in JSON, and to

then recover them. JSONPath is used to represent the links. 

http://GOESSNER.net/articles/JsonPath/