Definition

What is JSON?

JavaScript Object Notation — a plain-text format for structured data, the lingua franca of web APIs.

JSON is a string-based data format derived from JavaScript object syntax. It's everywhere because it's: human-readable, supported natively in JavaScript via `JSON.parse` / `JSON.stringify`, and supported in every major language via libraries. Six data types: string, number, boolean, null, array, object. No comments, no trailing commas, double-quoted strings only. Most web APIs return JSON; most config files in JS projects are JSON or JSON5. InBuild stores project documents as serialized JSON in Postgres TEXT columns.

Related terms

See it in action

Real templates, rendered live, next to the exported code. No account needed.