I need to understand JSON without technical jargon [closed] - json

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I am currently exploring the usages of JSON. I have read many posts, articles, YouTube videos. Yet, I still don't understand the purpose (it's been a month), practicality of JSON. No definition is suiting my logic to understand this concept in order to comfortably implement it.
What I understand (brief overall understanding): JSON provides an easier way to format data and send across networks.
My question: Could someone provide me a comprehensible storyline with JSON in action as I am struggling to understand its practicality. I hope this question makes sense, if not, I can try and re-word it.
Edit for #Philipp: Yes, I do have experience with reading Text-based files with Java (Mainly with assignments at Uni). No, I do not have experience with any competing technologies such as XML or YAML. Consciously, I believe JSON to be 'Cookies' in a sort of way but this most likely is wrong. I hope this helps and look forward to your explanation? Maybe it might help me understanding it.

Answer 1

JSON is, overly simplified, a standard for how to structure your own file formats. "File" does not necessarily mean a file stored in a filesystem. It can also be an ephemeral file which is created on one computer, sent to a different computer via network, gets processed and then discarded without ever storing it. But thinking of it as a file format makes things easier.
A JSON-based file format includes a document in a key-value structure. Every value has a key. Every value can either be a string, a number, another key-value structure or a list of the things mentioned before. Here is an example based on the one from the wikipedia article on JSON:
{
"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Smith",
"address": {
"streetAddress": "21 2nd Street",
"city": "New York",
"state": "NY",
"postalCode": "10021-3100"
},
"phoneNumbers": [
{
"type": "home",
"number": "212 555-1234"
},
{
"type": "office",
"number": "646 555-4567"
}
]
}
This file describes a person who has a first name, a last name, one address consisting of a street address, city, state and postal code, and a list of phone numbers, with each phone number having a type and a number.
OK, but there are certainly other ways to store that kind of information. Ways which might be more concise. So why would you choose to invent a file format based on JSON instead of just starting from scratch?
Library support. There are lots of libraries available for parsing and writing JSON. If you ever wrote a file parsing routine yourself, then you know how much of a PITA those can be. There are a ton of edge-cases you have to keep in mind to prevent your program from crashing or reading garbage data. A JSON library takes care of all of these edge-cases for you. This makes it a lot easier for you to create programs working with JSON data than when you invent your own file format.
Tool support. There are editors available which can edit any form of JSON data in a handy UI. For example, did you notice that Stackoverflow automatically added syntax highlighting to the JSON code above? I didn't do anything to make that happen. Stackoverflow just automatically recognized that it is JSON and colored it accordingly. That would not be possible with a homebrewed file format.
Good compromise between machine-readability and human-readability. The format above is not just easy to read for programs (thanks to the aforementioned library support) but also pretty readable and editable for humans. People can intuitively understand the format and edit it in a text editor without breaking stuff. Especially when they worked with JSON-based file formats before.
Forward- and backward compatibility of file formats. This is something you could technically achieve in your own file format, but JSON makes it a lot easier. Imagine you create version 2.0 of your program, which comes with a version 2.0 of the file format. Your documents now have some additional fields. Handling this in homebrewed text-based formats can be really difficult. But the key-value structure of JSON makes it pretty easy to recognize that certain keys are missing and then replace their values with reasonable defaults. Similarly, the 1.0 version of your program might make limited sense of 2.0 documents by simply ignoring any keys it doesn't understand yet.
Interoperability with JavaScript. This might be kind of situational, but the reason why you see JSON being used a lot in the context of web applications is that JSON is actually valid JavaScript. That means that when you have a browser-based application, converting to and from JavaScript Objects to JSON text and vice versa is trivial. That makes it a preferred choice for exchanging data between browser-based applications and servers. The result is that you see a lot of JSON in cookies or webservice requests (although none of these mandate the use of JSON).

Answer 2

JSON or (JavaScript Object Notation) is simply a lightweight, semi-structured way of representing a set of data.
One sample Storyline:
Let's say you are creating an application that needs to communicate with another application and you want to make it easier for other applications to consume the data your application provides.
There are a lot of ways to do this, but by using JSON you make the process more simple (the applications that consume your data can figure out how to read your data on their own - if they want to) AND you cut down on the amount of raw data that is being passed around.
To answer your question is very simple and lightweight compared to other communication methods like SOAP or connecting straight to the database where you hold your data.