What does JSON stand for?

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a standard text-based format for representing structured data based on JavaScript object syntax. It is commonly used for transmitting data in web applications (e.g., sending some data from the server to the client, so it can be displayed on a web page, or vice versa).

JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language.

JSON exists as a string — useful when you want to transmit data across a network. It needs to be converted to a native JavaScript object when you want to access the data. This is not a big issue — JavaScript provides a global JSON object that has methods available for converting between the two.

You can include the same basic data types inside JSON as you can in a standard JavaScript object — strings, numbers, arrays, booleans, and other object literals.