JSON and Builder Libraries

 JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. It is a lightweight data exchange format. It is mostly used for transmitting data between servers and client applications. It is the alternative for XML because of smaller in size, faster and easier to parse. It is easily readable and writable.
It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language so it is completely language independent. But for ease of use it follows conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others.
JSON is built on two structures:
A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or associative array.
An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an array, vector, list, or sequence.
These are universal data structures. Virtually all modern programming languages support them in one form or another. It makes sense that a data format that is interchangeable with programming languages also be based on these structures.
Here are the sample JSON format:
{  
   "employee": {  
       "id": 1000,
       "name": "Employee A",      
       "gender": Male  
   }  
}  

{ 
  "Employee" :  
    [  
     {"id":"1000","name":"Employee A","gender":"Male"},  
     {"id":"1001","name":"Employee B","gender":"Female"}  
    ]   
}  
There are lots of JSON builder libraries available to convert Objects into their JSON representation or vice versa. Here are the lists of some popular libraries-To go into more depth on JSON structure refer 
1.     Jackson
2.     Google-Gson
3.     Flexjson
4.     JSON.simple
5.     JSON-lib
6.     JSON-io
7.     JSON Processing
8.     Genson
While choosing a JSON library, parsing speed consideration plays an important role. Different parsing speed benchmark test concludes the libraries that performed best for big files suffered for small files and vice versa. Typical observation found that-
  • Parsing big JSON files, then Jackson and JSON-lib perform very well and most preferable library.
  • Parsing small JSON files, then Google-Gson and Flexjson perform very well and most preferable library.
  • Deal with both types of files, then JSON.simple is a good workhorse for a variable environment.

This is the basics on available popular JSON libraries.

In the continuation on JSON parsing, read another article on Parsing JSON withGson library.

To find more interesting topics on Software development follow me at https://medium.com/@ankit.sinhal

You can also find my Android Applications on play store
EzyNote

ShakeNLock

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Android O: Impact On Running Apps And Developer Viewpoint

Image
It’s been just about a year since Google released Android Nougat. In the next version of its Android operating system, it revealed the first developer preview of Android O (Hoping it’ll named Android Oreo) on 21 March 2017. In this article, we are going to discuss all the important features and changes of Android O from developer’s perspective. The Android O release will be known as Android 8.0. The final version of Android 8.0 will be out sometime in Q3 of 2017 and before that Google has plan to rollout DP #4. Based on DP #1, here are list of major behavioral changes which will impact on all currently running applications when run on Android O platform. ·        Background execution limits ·        Background location limits ·        Handles identifiers(Android ID) differently ·        Account Access ·     ...
Read more

Android Performance: Avoid using ENUM on Android

Image
What and why we use ENUM? Enum in java is a data type that contains fixed set of constants. When we required predefined set of values which represents some kind of data, we use ENUM. We always use Enums when a variable can only take one out of a small set of possible values. For example: public enum Season {   WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL } Instead of using Integer or String constants, we generally use ENUM to increase compile time checking and avoid errors from passing in invalid constants. Drawback of using ENUM Each value in an ENUM is an object and each declaration will take some runtime memory simply to reference the object. So ENUM values will take more memory then Integer or String constant. Even in old android devices (<=2.2), there were some performance issue related to ENUM which were solved in JIT compiler. Adding a single ENUM will increase the size (13x times than the Integer constant) of final DEX file. It also generates th...
Read more

Local Broadcast, less overhead and secure in Android

Image
Broadcast receiver is an Android component which allows you to send or receive Android system or application events. All the registered application are notified by the Android runtime once event happens. It works similar to the publish-subscribe design pattern and used for asynchronous inter-process communication. For example, applications can register for various system events like boot complete or battery low, and Android system sends broadcast when specific event occur. Any application can also create its own custom broadcasts. Basics of broadcast Let’s discuss some basic concepts of broadcast receiver. Register Broadcast There are two ways to register broadcast receiver- Manifest-declared (Statically) : By this receiver can be registered via the AndroidManifest.xml file. Context-registered (Dynamically): By this register a receiver dynamically via the Context.registerReceiver() method. Receive Broadcasts To be able to receive a br...
Read more