What is JSON and why would I use it?

Question

I\'ve looked on wikipedia and Googled it and read the official documentation, but I still haven\'t got to the point where I really understand what JSON is, and why I\'d use

Answer 1

Sometimes technicality is given where none is required, and while many of the top voted answers are accurately technical and specific, I personally don't think they are any more easy to understand, or succinct, as what can be found on Wikipedia, or in official documentation.

The way I like to think of JSON is exactly what it is - a language within a world of different languages. However, the difference between JSON and other languages is that "everyone" "speaks" JSON, along with their "native language."

Using a real world example, let's pretend we have three people. One person speaks Igbo as their native tongue. The second person would like to interact with the first person, however, the first person speaks Yoruba as their first language.

What can we do?

Thankfully, the third person in our example grew up speaking English, but also happens to speak both Igbo and Yoruba as second languages, and so can act as an intermediary between the first two individuals.

In the programming world, the first "person" is Python, the second "person" is Ruby, and the third "person" is JSON, who just so happens to be able to "translate" Ruby into Python and vice versa! Now obviously this analogy isn't a perfect one, but, as someone who is bilingual, I believe it's an easy way to look at how JSON interacts with other programming languages.