JSON vs XML: What’s the Difference?
What is JSON?
JSON is a file format that uses human-readable text for storing and transmitting data objects containing attribute-value pairs and arrays. JSON is used to store information in an organized and easy-to-access manner. JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. It offers a human-readable collection of data that can be accessed logically.
In this XML vs JSON tutorial, you will learn:
- What is JSON?
- What is XML?
- History of JSON
- History of XML
- Features of JSON
- Features of XML
- Difference between JSON and XML
- JSON Code vs XML Code
- Advantages of using JSON
- Advantages of using XML
- Disadvantages of using JSON
- Disadvantages of using XML
What is XML?
XML is an extensible markup language that is designed to store data. It is popularly used for transferring data. It is case-sensitive. XML allows you to define markup elements and generate customized markup language. An element is a basic unit in the XML language. The extension of XML file is .xml.
KEY DIFFERENCE
- JSON object has a type whereas XML data is typeless.
- JSON does not provide namespace support while XML provides namespaces support.
- JSON has no display capabilities whereas XML offers the capability to display data.
- JSON is less secured whereas XML is more secure compared to JSON.
- JSON supports only UTF-8 encoding whereas XML supports various encoding formats.
History of JSON
Here are important landmarks that form the history of JSON:
- Douglas Crockford specified the JSON format in the early 2000s.
- The official website was launched in 2002.
- In December 2005, Yahoo! starts offering some of its web services in JSON.
- JSON became an ECMA international standard in 2013.
- The most updated JSON format standard was published in 2017.
History of XML
Here, are the important landmark from the history of XML:
- XML was also derived from SGML.
- Version 1.0 of XML was released in February 1998.
- Jan 2001:IETF Proposed Standard: XML Media Types
- XML is the Extensible Markup Language.
- 1970: Charles Goldfarb, Ed Mosher, and Ray Lorie invented GML
- The development of XML started in the year 1996 at Sun Microsystem
Features of JSON
- Easy to use – JSON API offers high-level facade, which helps you to simplify commonly used use-cases.
- Performance – JSON is quite fast as it consumes very less memory space, which is especially suitable for large object graphs or systems.
- Free tool – JSON library is open source and free to use.
- Doesn’t require to create mapping – Jackson API provides default mapping for many objects to be serialized.
- Clean JSON – Creates clean, and compatible JSON result that is easy to read.
- Dependency – JSON library does not require any other library for processing.
Features of XML
- XML tags are not predefined. You need to define your customized tags.
- XML was designed to carry data, not allows you to display that data.
- Mark-up code of XML is easy to understand for a human.
- Well, the structured format is easy to read and write from programs.
- XML is an extensible markup language like HTML.
Difference between JSON and XML
Difference between JSON and XML
Here is the prime difference between JSON vs XML:
JSON | XML |
---|---|
JSON object has a type | XML data is typeless |
JSON types: string, number, array, Boolean | All XML data should be string |
Data is readily accessible as JSON objects | XML data needs to be parsed. |
JSON is supported by most browsers. | Cross-browser XML parsing can be tricky |
JSON has no display capabilities. | XML offers the capability to display data because it is a markup language. |
JSON supports only text and number data type. | XML support various data types such as number, text, images, charts, graphs, etc. It also provides options for transferring the structure or format of the data with actual data. |
Retrieving value is easy | Retrieving value is difficult |
Supported by many Ajax toolkit | Not fully supported by Ajax toolkit |
A fully automated way of deserializing/serializing JavaScript. | Developers have to write JavaScript code to serialize/de-serialize from XML |
Native support for object. | The object has to be express by conventions – mostly missed use of attributes and elements. |
It supports only UTF-8 encoding. | It supports various encoding. |
It doesn’t support comments. | It supports comments. |
JSON files are easy to read as compared to XML. | XML documents are relatively more difficult to read and interpret. |
It does not provide any support for namespaces. | It supports namespaces. |
It is less secured. | It is more secure than JSON. |
JSON Code vs XML Code
Let’s see a sample JSON Code
{ "student": [ { "id":"01", "name": "Tom", "lastname": "Price" }, { "id":"02", "name": "Nick", "lastname": "Thameson" } ] }
Let’s study the same code in XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <root> <student> <id>01</id> <name>Tom</name> <lastname>Price</lastname> </student> <student> <id>02</id> <name>Nick</name> <lastname>Thameson</lastname> </student> </root>
Advantages of using JSON
Here are the important benefits/ pros of using JSON:
- Provide support for all browsers
- Easy to read and write
- Straightforward syntax
- You can natively parse in JavaScript using eval() function
- Easy to create and manipulate
- Supported by all major JavaScript frameworks
- Supported by most backend technologies
- JSON is recognized natively by JavaScript
- It allows you to transmit and serialize structured data using a network connection.
- You can use it with modern programming languages.
- JSON is text which can be converted to any object of JavaScript into JSON and send this JSON to the server.
Advantages of using XML
Here are significant benefits/cons of using XML:
- Makes documents transportable across systems and applications. With the help of XML, you can exchange data quickly between different platforms.
- XML separates the data from HTML
- XML simplifies platform change process
- Allows creating user-defined tags.
Disadvantages of using JSON
Here are cons/ drawback of using JSON:
- No namespace support, hence poor extensibility
- Limited development tools support
- It offers support for formal grammar definition
Disadvantages of using XML
Here, are cons/ drawbacks of using XML:
- XML requires a processing application
- The XML syntax is very similar to other alternatives ‘text-based’ data transmission formats which is sometimes confusing
- No intrinsic data type support
- The XML syntax is redundant
Now, you can easily determine between XML or JSON which is better suitable for you.