Android: xml or json? - android

I'm curious whether it's more convenient to use json or xml in my android applications? Or does it not matter?
In Flash apps it's definitely more convenient to use xml, but in javascript (at least in my opinion), it's more convenient to work with json. I have a rails backend that could conveniently give json or xml so I'm trying to make a choice now.

Well the reason i ll recommend JSON not easy of use but the network bandwidth. JSON msgs are smaller in size as compared to XML. So consider this also for choosing one over the other.
Secondly, you can use Gson another lib also to ease your implementation which is easier to use as compared to org.json implementation that comes with Android platform.

JSON would be very easy in Android. You already have libraries for it, whose Classes you can use to parse the JSON file or content.
There is some pain involved in parsing XML. I would suggest JSON. Let me know if you need any examples of parsing using JSON.

Android SDK has both org.json or org.xml package so i think it is not a matter of Android sdk, but of your application/api design

JSON is very easy to use as comparing to XML.Android has support for both JSON and XML.A detailed example is already given here.This talks about when you go for JSON and XML
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-andbene1/
Hope this will help you.

Related

which is more efficient parsing xml or json in android app

I would like to know which is more efficient to get the data from the server by the xml or json.
Another question:
does XmlPullParser related to parsing xml data that come from the web service? so if I am using json I don't need XmlPullParser ! or there is other uses !
thank you very much
What I've found extremely useful for parsing JSON is Google's gson library. For xml, you can use gson underneath to do the same thing with gson-xml. With a single line of code you can map your JSON/XML to your objects without having to write a single line of parsing code.
If you find performance to be an issue (I'm making this suggestion because these libs make you super productive), there are mechanisms in both to allow you finer grained control. I doubt you'll have problems with performance though.
For a very thoroughly researched answer to the headline question (though focussed on browsers, not android apps), see David Lee's Balisage 2013 paper:
http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol10/html/Lee01/BalisageVol10-Lee01.html
His conclusion, in one line, is that the choice between XML and JSON makes very little difference in itself - though the details of how you do XML or how you do JSON can make a big difference.

Is Default JSON LIB robust enough for real time twitter feed?

I am going to be consuming real time twitter feed and parsing it into objects for list view display. I need robust solution is default json lib good enough for this task or do I need to use Gson / jackson lib?
Check Gson and JackSon:
GSON
JACKSON
EDIT: I did not see you mention this libraries. Yes, you should use them. This are robust
libraries, I used them to consume Json webservices and no problem so far.
GSON/Jackson are just the libraries that allow you to parse json responses into objects or the other way round. However, the default implementation of json provided in android framework is capable enough of dealing any response string. The only drawback or turn-off is that you need to write extra code for simple things to get done.
Following are some links with bench marking of JSON libs...
http://blog.novoj.net/2012/02/05/json-java-parsers-generators-microbenchmark/
http://danielywoo.blogspot.in/2011/04/json-java-libraries-benchmark-jsonlib.html
Jackson Vs. Gson
And from the benchmark it looks like Jackson is the best and the fastest library for the JSON parsing...

Do you advise clients to use JSON or XML? And Why?

Many times my client ask me whether they will deliver data via XML feed or JSON strings. I usually say:
XML if you already have a feed and do not have a web developer who will create script for generating JSON strings
JSON if you do not have any feed and need to create any from the scratch
What do you say? Do you think that delivering data via XML feeds is obsolete and that XML is over-complicated and too heavy?
Should I advise all clients (for the sake of the future) to move onto JSON way of delivering data?
EDIT
From another discussion https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2636245/choosing-between-json-and-xml I can see that JSON is advised for web services, which is the most used case scenario in my clients. It seems that I was advising them properly.
What is they want to pass news articles onto a mobile device - shall I advise XML of JSON?
What about post&get cases when I need to post some data and the to get the response which will be displayed on user's mobile device - XML or JSON?
If the consumers are browsers or mobile devices, I would recommend JSON.
Faster
Lighter
Native parsing support
If the consumers are other programs, I would recommend XML
Can be validated easily
Code generators available to make programming easy and is less error-prone
JSON - if you have a choice :) Google GSON is a serious help there.
We Use JSON: If we want to serialize a data structure that’s not too text-heavy and all you want is for the receiver to get the same data structure with minimal effort
We use XML:If we want to provide general-purpose data that the receiver might want to do unforeseen weird and crazy things with, or if you want to be really paranoid and picky about i18n, or if what you’re sending is more like a document than a struct, or if the order of the data matters, or if the data is potentially long-lived.
This discussed topic might help you .
I agree with all the other recommendations for JSON, but for me the main reason for going with JSON is it's far easier to process on the server especially if you are using a language that supports the JSON structure natively (e.g NodeJS or Python).
I would not say XML is obsolete though. The one obvious case where XML wins is readability. As a programmer I would say JSON is just as readable but I've worked with a lot of people (mainly web designer types) who prefer the look and feel of XML, probably because they are already intimately familiar with HTML.
I agree with your assessment really. Json is easier (for a human) to read, more intuitive and lightweight. XML is better if you have lots of existing XML solutions/interfaces that you're plugging in to. I see XML as the established, mature heavyweight of structured documents, but you don't always need an established, mature heavyweight. It all depends on the use case.

Which is the best way to fetch/retrieve data from server in android? Is it Xml or Json

I am trying to upload & retrieve data with the server.
Which is the best way to retrieve data using xml or json ?
Thank you
As i have used both XML and JSON, and also used all parser including SAX, DOM, Pull Parser. I have also developed web-service for JSON and XML both.
So I suggest you to go with JSON. why?
Because webservice for JSON response seems to develop easily, we don't need to do anything for creating JSON response, we just have to do json_encode() in PHP.
And while in Android, we can parse the JSON string easily by writing less code.
since it supports both.It depends on your feasibility.better go with json as it is easy to implement
I've just done an app that exchanges data over the wire with an API using Google's protocol buffers. There's a neat Java library available from Google for generating the java objects based on your proto files and other libraries to use for parsing an input stream into objects.
Really fast, very low bandwidth, though a bit of an overhead to setup and there's no readable data that you can drop into Notepad to view if you're having trouble.
IMHO the point of choosing one of them goes mainly down to the data size that needs to be transferred to the client. Obviously that should be as small as possible and so the preferred choice is usually
JSON
Google Protocol Buffers
..because they are much more concise than XML.
For data-oriented applications, I prefer JSON to XML due to its simplicity and ease of processing on the client side. XML may be great on the server side, but JSON is definitely easier to deal with on the client side.
have a look on the following url
http://www.subbu.org/blog/2006/08/json-vs-xml
Simplicity
XML is simpler than SGML, but JSON is much simpler than XML. JSON has a much smaller grammar and maps more directly onto the data structures used in modern programming languages.
Extensibility
JSON is not extensible because it does not need to be. JSON is not a document markup language, so it is not necessary to define new tags or attributes to represent data in it.
Interoperability
JSON has the same interoperability potential as XML.
Openness
JSON is at least as open as XML, perhaps more so because it is not in the center of corporate/political standardization struggles.
XML is human readable
JSON is much easier for human to read than XML. It is easier to write, too. It is also easier for machines to read and write.
XML vs JSON
JSON is better then XML that's it.

Is there an easy to use XML parser for remote database connection?

I am making an Android app, and I need to connect to a remote database with a webservice.
I will receive an XML file from the webservice with the results of my SELECT query (various rows in some cases).
I don't know much about XML or web services, I only know that I will receive an XML file and that I have to parse it to obtain the data.
Is there an XML parser for this purpose that is easy to add to my app and configure?
I would suggest not using XML and instead use JSON. JSON is much cleaner and much less in kilobytes. Then I would use Jackson to deserialize the JSON string to an object. You really don't need to do any work. Just point to the URL and you get an object back. You just have to make sure on the webservice you also generate correct JSON, which you can also use Jackson.
Here is how easy it is:
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); // can reuse, share globally
User user = mapper.readValue(new File("user.json"), User.class); // can use File, URL, String!
Designing XML parsers are not very difficult. You can probably google for xml parsers and then change them to look for the tags you need or values.
Google is your friend.
You don't need an in depth knowledge about XML but you should know a bit about it. A recommended read would be this article. You should also at least know how the server is handling the communication. Is it a unidirectional communication (your application only fetching data) or is it a bidirectional communication (you are sending requests to the server). If the later how is the server handling them and so on. A bit of background knowledge is required.
I always recommend using the SAX parser as it seems so be the most efficient one due to its concept (being event based). A good read about dealing with XML files on Android can be found here. And also don't forget to search for similar questions here on StackOverflow as it is quite a popular question with some quality answers.

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