I commonly see data stored in JSON objects/arrays in open sourced Android code.
Why/When should I use JSON over normal Java ArrayLists?
JSON is a standard for transferring data between servers. It's a format that can be understood by any language, whether it be Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, or JavaScript. Since it's a widely recognized format, it's much easier to work with JSON.
Many Android apps do communicate with a server, so it was probably easier for those developers to transfer the data to and from their server, which may or may not have been using Java.
If your client android application need data from a web service, then JSON data type can be used instead of XML because it's less character cost and it's easier to read
Related
I cannot find any explanation about why we use JSON when parsing it in Android?. Are we required to use it or is this just optional? What's the advantage and disadvantage of using it to extract data from the internet? Do we have to encode every data from PHP & MySQL into a JSON Format?
See this question. JSON is known as JavaScript Object Notation, it's a lot easier to parse then XML data, and there are libraries to help you retrieve the values from a JSON structure. As for the PHP & MySQL question, Android doesn't use MySQL, it uses SQLite instead. Hope this helps.
JSON is just a format to represent Objects in textform. Its used often in Android because its nice to work with and has many libraries to help parse it.
Sometimes other formats are used like XML or something else to represent the data.
You can use any communication protocol you want, json is just an accepted standard. You can't just 'dump the mysql database' to the app, there has to be some sort of communication protocol that the server and client agree on to transport the data.
Some alternatives are xml or a binary format (such as protobuf).
I'd recommend json due to the abundance of tools and literature on it.
(Heres a blog post I wrote on using Jackson to parse json in Android http://shmuelrosansky.com/jackson/android/2015/07/20/jackson-android/)
I need to know the purpose of using JSON in android ?
Please anyone tell me in a simple way...
Thanks
The same reason you'd use it on any platform. JSON is a way of storing and expressing information. It uses attribute-value pairs in a hierarchical structure. In Android specifically, you may need to download some information from a database, which could be stored in JSON and then read by your app. Alternatively, you could store data locally in JSON but there are probably better and more efficient ways to do that if you're not sending data across a network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON
JSON is very light weight, structured, easy to parse and much human readable. JSON is best alternative to XML when your android app needs to interchange data with your server
For example, you can get data Json if you work with database. Or if you work with some API's then you can get data in format Json.
For example an app could fetch data from a server. When using JSON to get the data, the traffic is quite small and the app can easily work with it.
For example you have a server with a database with recipes, and your app displays recipes, the app could ask the server for recipes, and it gets a JSON in return. for example:
{
name: 'Cookies'
ingredients: { 'Butter', 'Eggs', ... /* I don't know, I'm not a chef :D */
...
}
The app can then just read the properties and display them in a neat list ;)
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight format that is used for data interchanging. It is also a subset of JavaScript's Object Notation (the way objects are built in JavaScript
Pls go through this link: http://www.copterlabs.com/blog/json-what-it-is-how-it-works-how-to-use-it/
JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation
JSON is lightweight text-data interchange format
JSON is language independent *
JSON is "self-describing" and easy to understand
* JSON uses JavaScript syntax for describing data objects, but JSON is still language and platform independent. JSON parsers and JSON libraries exists for many different programming languages.
Using JSON in Android is not different than using it on any other platform. The main advantage of the format (in comparison to XML for example) is the small size of the data. This is very important for mobile devices due to the scarce resource those application use - i.e. your mobile app should be able to run with little memory usage, slow internet connection and so on.
Besides Android's framework has built-in tools for parsing / creating JSON objects. Thus it is both easy and efficient to use JSON rather than XML. If you have any project specific reason to prefer another data presentation format - don't worry. It is perfectly fine NOT to use JSON as long as some other format is more suitable for your project.
In short JSON is usually the right choice due to its small footprint and easy of use.
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.
I currently have a database and want my android apps to access a webservice and then access the database.
Currently i'm thinking of using either option. ksoap with asp.net that uses .asmx files created and also a page using asp.net that response.write json output. May i know which should be the better choice?
I would go the JSON route. Android has an API for parsing JSON built-in, and JSON format is more efficient in terms of size.
Aside from basic XML parsers, there's nothing built into android to handle SOAP, and from what I've seen, 3rd party offerings are limited.
Try this.The service is in php but should be simple to adapt ti asp.net.
http://www.embarcadero.com/rad-in-action/php-android
In the Android application I am building, I want to be able to communicate with a local server developed in Django. (Basically a login page and a home page populated with posts and images from users) So do I need to use XML Parsers for the parsing the response from a Django server or is it possible for the server to respond with strings which can be directly used? Also what about images?
Is the JSON or XML Parser easier and robust to use in Android? The responses would be basically like tweets with a username, image and message. I was thinking of using the SAXParser. Any better alternatives?
Regards,
Primal
Android has built in libraries for parsing both JSON and XML.
In my opinion, the easier (and better) one would probably JSON if you're just looking to output the serialized version of your models.
Some relevant links:
JSON:
https://developer.android.com/reference/org/json/JSONObject.html
XML:
https://developer.android.com/reference/org/xmlpull/v1/XmlPullParser.html
https://developer.android.com/reference/javax/xml/parsers/package-summary.html
Edit: In response to the last part of your question, yes, you can just output strings. Depending on the complexity of your data, you'll end up making things harder for yourself. Parsing JSON on Android is super easy. Just do it.
SAXParser is very easy to use, it just calls a method when it enters a node with the name of the node and its arguments.
So yes, using SAX is a good idea.