JSON Data Example [Curl/Bash Code]

JSON is a widely used lightweight format for storing and transmitting data. JSON is often used to transfer data over the Internet between web and mobile apps and a server. JSON is smaller and more convenient than XML. In this JSON data example, we send sample JSON data to the ReqBin endpoint and walk through the different JSON data types and JSON formats. The Curl/Bash code was automatically generated for the JSON Data example.

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Last updated: Apr 07, 2021 Viewed: 2865 times

Author: ReqBin

Curl/Bash code for JSON Data Example

This Curl/Bash code snippet was generated automatically for the JSON Data example.
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What is JSON?

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a textual data interchange format based on JavaScript. Like many other text-based formats, JSON is easy for humans to read, and easy for computers to parse and process. Despite its origins in JavaScript, it is considered to be a programming language independent. For many programming languages, there are ready-to-use code libraries for creating and manipulating JSON data. Due to its conciseness compared to XML, JSON can be more suitable for serializing and storing complex data structures, especially if the size of the data is important.

The JSON is used by web applications for both browser-to-browser (AJAX) and server-to-server (HTTP software bridging) communications, as well as mobile applications to exchange data between client and server via REST API.

JSON Structure

JSON data can be stored in one of two structures:

1) A set of key:value pairs. In various programming languages, this is implemented in the form of a record, structure, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or an associative array. The key can only be a string (case sensitivity is not regulated by the standard, it is up to the software.

Names with letters in different cases are considered different. Duplicate key names are allowed but not recommended. The handling of such situations is at the discretion of the software using this sample JSON. Possible options are to consider only the first key, consider only the last key, or generate an error. For example JavaScript throws an error when parsing such an JSON example.

JSON data example with key:value pairs

{
  "Id": 78912,
  "Customer": "Jason Sweet",
  "Quantity": 1,
  "Price": 18.00
}

2) An ordered set of values. In many programming languages, this is implemented as an array, vector, list, or sequence.

JSON data example with array

{
  "items": [	
     {"key1": "value1"},
	 {"key2": "value2"},
	 {"key3": "value3"}
  ]
}

Both JSON data structures are supported by most modern programming languages, which allows the JSON format to be used to exchange data between clients and servers written in different programming languages.

JSON Syntax Rules

- objects are enclosed in curly braces {}.
- arrays are enclosed in square brackets []
- numbers are written without quotes.
- literals true, false and null are written without quotes.
- strings must be enclosed in double quotes.
- single quotes for strings are not allowed
- unicode characters are allowed in strings.
- special characters must be escaped with a backslash or written in hexadecimal unicode as \uFFFF.

JSON strings are like JavaScript strings. JSON numbers are also similar to JavaScript numbers, except that JSON uses only dotted decimal format. Spaces can be inserted between any two syntax elements.

JSON Data Example

The following example shows the JSON data representation for an object describing a person.

Sample JSON for a person

{
   "firstName": "John",
   "lastName": "Brown",
   "address": {
       "streetAddress": "5th Avenue, 101",
       "city": "New York",
       "postalCode": 10001
   },
   "phoneNumbers": [
       "800-855-4555",
       "800-767-4977"
   ]
}

Note the pair postalCode: 10001. You can use both numbers and strings as values in JSON. Therefore, the entry "postalCode": "101101" contains a string, and "postalCode": 10001 is already a numeric value. Due to weak typing in JavaScript, a string can be converted to a number and does not affect the logic of the program, but in some situations, this can lead to a problem when the code expects a number but receives strings. It is recommended that you handle the value type with caution because JSON is used for cross-system communication.

JSON Requests and Responses

Clients sending JSON data to the server must include the Content-Type: application/json request header in the request. This header allows the server to correctly process the data in the request message body. If clients expect the server to return JSON, it must also send the Accept: application/json header to inform the server about it.

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