A couple of years back, I taught myself some basic JavaScript (JS) so that I could add extra interactivity/functionality to some e-learning courses I was developing in Storyline.
I certainly didn’t try to become highly proficient or fluent in JS. Just enough to understand basic concepts and to achieve what was required.
My, how the world has changed in a short time. If you asked me to replicate what I did 2 years ago, I’d log straight into ChatGPT and ask it for help. Because I definitely wouldn’t be able to recall what I did without some help/prompting.
When I started asking ChatGPT about JSON and I discovered it stood for JavaScript Object Notation, I groaned a little and thought I might find myself learning a variant of JavaScript.
I needn’t have worried. Despite the scary-sounding name, JSON is actually a very simple idea and definitely not as complicated as actual JS.
In fact, JSON is a way of structuring data that is easy to read for both humans and machines. It can also be used in almost every programming language.
This last point is hugely important because it means that JSON makes it easy for different systems, apps and languages to ‘talk’ to each other, i.e., to pass data to each other without breaking.
It operates using what is called a ‘key-value pair’. Again, another slightly intimidating name which is actually incredibly simple and something we are totally familiar with.
A key is essentially a unique label or identifier to describe a piece of data. The value is the actual instance (or instances) of that data described by the label.
So, in a really simple example, keys could be “name”, “company” and “job role” and the instances could be “Andrew Jackson”, “Pacific Blue” and “Founder”. In JSON, this would look like this:
“name”: “Andrew Jackson”,
“company”: “Pacific Blue”,
“job role”: “Founder”
If you have more than one instance of a piece of data associated with a given key, you can create a list – in tech speak this is an array. Continuing with our simple example, in JSON a list of products would look like this:
“product”: [“PerformaGo”, “PerformaGo Light”, “PerformaGo Ultra”]
Notice how the square brackets are used to indicate the list.
And very typically, you would be grouping together pieces of related data logically or in a way that is meaningful to the users of that data.
So, all of the data we have looked at in our simple example, might logically group together as company information. In JSON, it would look like this:
{
“name”: “Andrew Jackson”,
“company”: “Pacific Blue”,
“job role”: “Founder”,
“product”: [“PerformaGo”, “PerformaGo Light”, “PerformaGo Ultra”],
}
Notice how the curly brackets are used to indicate the presence of a group – or in JSON speak an object.
It’s also possible to place an object within an object. In other words, create a sub-group within an existing group.
Now just like any programming language, attention to detail is vital. Miss out or misplace any of the required punctuation or layout and it won’t be read. But, overall, you can see that once you understand the basic syntax, this is not especially difficult to read or write.
Add in the portability of JSON (i.e., that it can be read and understood by most existing programming languages) you can see that you have a winning combination. Something that is relatively easy for humans to read and write and the means to move data between systems using a single ‘language’.
Stand by for more on the two other parts of the golden triangle in coming weeks.
Until then…
