joebegley15 / json-intro-08

Introduces JSON

#JSON

Objectives

By the end of this, students should be able to:

• Write JSON by hand and validate it using a 3rd-party JSON validator.
• Convert JavaScript objects to JSON, and vice versa.
• Parse JSON, iterate over the resulting object, and use jQuery to append multiple HTML elements.

Prerequisites

• JavaScript Objects

JSON :: Overview

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight text-based data format that's based on JavaScript (specifically, a subset of Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999). Because it's text, and it looks like JavaScript, JSON is simultaneously both easy for humans to read and write AND easy for programs to parse and generate.

JSON is completely language-independent, but it 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.

We use JSON objects to transfer data between applications and Javascript. To keep everything consistent, all JSON code must follow a number of strict conventions (stricter even than normal JavaScript!) in order to be syntactically correct. For instance:

• Property names must be double-quoted strings.
• Trailing commas are forbidden.
• Leading zeroes are prohibited.
• In numbers, a decimal point must be followed by at least one digit.
• Most characters are allowed in strings; however, certain characters (such as ', ", \, and newline/tab) must be 'escaped' with a preceding backslash (\) in order to be read as characters (as opposed to JSON control code).
• All strings must be double-quoted.
• No comments!

Instructions

• Fork and clone this repo. Then, go into app/app.js and follow the steps.

Additional Resources

• JSONLint
• JSON on Wikipedia