Showing posts with label json. Show all posts
Showing posts with label json. Show all posts

Monday, May 20, 2013

Check email your way. Mailsac has RSS and JSON feeds.

Starting now, Mailsac will let you check your inbox using the popular RSS xml format. As an added perk you can get your inbox as JSON. This further enables programmatic email retrieval.
Look for the buttons in your inbox!

JSON and RSS feeds allow you to automate the retrieval of your disposable email. An RSS reader can be used to check your inbox.

Friday, April 19, 2013

JSON in 5 minutes


JSON = JavaScript Object Notation

  • lightweight data-interchange format
  • is literally javascript code - valid data types: Objects, Arrays, Numbers, Strings (includes Date), Boolean
  • keys must be in quotes, unlike in javascript code the keys do not need quotes.
  • Supports unlimited nesting 

Example

 {
 "key1": "I like cheese",
 "key2": ["An","array","of","strings","with",1,"number"],
 "keyForAnObject": {
   "Cheeses": ["Blue","Swiss","Cheddar","Jack"],
   "NumberOfCheese": 2,
   "FavoriteCheeseIndex": 1,
   "isThereAFavorite": true
 }
}
Accessing the data in Javascript:
var JsonDataString = {
 "key1": "I like cheese",
 "key2": ["An","array","of","strings","with",1,"number"],
 "keyForAnObject": {
   "Cheeses": ["Blue","Swiss","Cheddar","Jack"],
   "NumberOfCheese": 2,
   "FavoriteCheeseIndex": 1,
   "isThereAFavorite": true
 }
};

var data = JSON.parse(JsonDataString); // JSON is a global function

data.key1 // "I like cheese"
data.key2[3] // "strings"
data.key2[5] // 1
var internalObject = data.KeyForAnObject;
internalObject.Cheeses[1] // "Swiss"
data.KeyForAnObject.Cheeses[1] // "Swiss"

Most important Javascript JSON functions

JSON.parse( JsonDataString )
Safer than eval(). Returns a javascript object/type.
JSON.stringify( Object )
Returns a JSON string from any non-function javascript object. 

Cross platform

These Javascript JSON functions are available in some form for basically every programming language.
See http://json.org/ and scroll down for all of the supported libraries. 
Note: JSON.stringify() is often "serializeAsJson" or something similar.

C# Pseudo-code Example

using System.Web.Script.Serialization;
class SomeClass
{
 class JsonResponse
 {
  public bool TrueOrFalse = true;
  public string Hi = "hi!";
  public List = new List();
 }
 
 public static string Responder()
 {
  JavaScriptSerializer jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
  JsonResponse resObj = new JsonResponse();
  
  return jss.Serialize(resObj);
 }
 
}

Use cases

JSON can be used wherever XML is used, but is more human readable and has a smaller footprint. More easily supports typed data than XML.
Returning JSON from a server to a client browser during AJAX. Since JSON maps directly to a javascript object it can be manipulated as native code.
Multidimensional arrays or arrays of objects are common, representing database rows and columns.
Example response from server:
Content-Type: application/json
[[
 1,"Jim","yeeee"
],[
 2,"Wilson","I like cheese"
]]

as XML, it might look like:

 
  1
  Jim
  yeeee
 
 
  2
  Wilson
  I like cheese