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Both JSON and XML can be used to receive data from a web server. The following JSON and XML examples both define an employees object, with an array of 3 employees:
{"employees":[
{ "firstName":"John", "lastName":"Doe" },
{ "firstName":"Anna", "lastName":"Smith" },
{ "firstName":"Peter", "lastName":"Jones" }
]}<employees> <employee>
Formula
< firstName > John </firstName > < lastName > Doe </lastName ></employee> <employee>
Formula
< firstName > Anna </firstName > < lastName > Smith </lastName ></employee> <employee>
Formula
< firstName > Peter </firstName > < lastName > Jones </lastName ></employee> </employees>
Both JSON and XML are "self describing" (human readable) Both JSON and XML are hierarchical (values within values) Both JSON and XML can be parsed and used by lots of programming languages Both JSON and XML can be fetched with an XMLHttpRequest
XML has to be parsed with an XML parser. JSON can be parsed by a standard JavaScript function.
XML is much more difficult to parse than JSON.
Formula
JSON is parsed into a ready - to - use JavaScript object.
For AJAX applications, JSON is faster and easier than XML:Use the XML DOM to loop through the document
JSON.Parse the JSON string