JSON in Action » GFxtra

Learn JSON - The API Response Format! Build Unique API-based Applications with JSON (javascript Object Notation)

JSON (javascript Object Notation) is a popular data interchange format. JSON has significantly improved server-to-browser communications, especially when it comes to AJAX. Most of today's APIs return the response in JSON format as it is much easier to load, read and process JSON compared to XML, making it very popular.

javascript Object Notation is text-based and human-readable. JSON is very easy to use with javascript as the syntax of JSON is a subset of javascript. Though it is a subset of javascript, JSON is language-independent. Most of the popular programming languages including PHP, Ruby, C#, Python etc. support JSON making it the widely used data interchange format.

This course "JSON in Action" is a 100% hands-on JSON (javascript Object Notation) course. By the end of this course, you will not only understand what JSON is, but also learn how to develop applications making use of real-world APIs that return JSON data. Just learning JSON syntax is not going to help you in anyways. You should be able to use JSON in the development process. Though AJAX and APIs do not come under the scope of this course, here we discuss how to use AJAX to contact APIs and then to collect the JSON result returned by APIs.

This course is structured as follows:

In the first section, you will understand what JSON is, compare JSON and XML and also learn why JSON is not javascript Object.

In the second section, you will understand JSON in more detail. You will learn JSON syntax rules and different data types (number, string, boolean, null, array and object) you can use in JSON data. You will also practise to identify different data types in real world JSON data and also to write JSON data on your own.

In the next section, you will understand how easy it is to use JSON with javascript. You will learn how to use JSON.parse and JSON.stringify methods to convert JSON data to javascript objects and javascript objects to JSON strings respectively. You will also learn how to get the required information from the available JSON data. You will understand the difference between dot notation and bracket notation. You will also learn how to use XMLHttpRequest object to fetch the .json file from a server.

The fourth section explains how to use AJAX techniques to contact an API and to collect the JSON output returned by the API. You will learn how to contact the API using GET or POST methods and also making a synchronous or asynchronous requests. You will also see how you can pass JSON as the input to an API.

In the next section, we discuss how to use JSON with PHP. This lecture explains json_encode and json_decode methods. This section will be updated to teach you how to use JSON with other programming languages as well.

The last section is the Let's Develop section where you are going to apply your JSON knowledge to develop some applications on your own. Now there are two applications in this section.

Currency Converter
BMI Calculator
The first application "Currency Converter" application contacts a real-world API, collects the JSON data, and performs currency conversion. The second application "BMI Calculator" is a more detailed one. As part of this application, you will be developing a simple API using PHP. You will contact that API (which you designed on your own), collect the JSON response and then process it to get the result you want.

So, what are you waiting for? Join this 100% practical JSON course and start developing API-based applications on your own applying JSON knowledge.