JSON vs XML - Differences and Similarities

Q: Question 1: What is JSON?

Answer: JavaScript Object Notation can be defined as a lightweight format for data interchange, and it is entirely language-independent. Being based on the JavaScript programming language, it is easy to understand and generate.

Q: Question 2: What is XML?

Answer: Extensible Markup Language can now be defined as a language designed to carry rather than display data. This can be said as a language that defines a set of rules that can be used to encode documents in a specific format readable by both humans and machines.

Introduction

We all work with data, and we receive enormous amounts of data from web servers, but how and using what? Using languages like JSON and XML, we can easily fetch data from the webserver. So two different languages doing the same work? Creates a lot of questions for us.

So this article explains the differences and similarities between JSON and XML but before that, let's have a small discussion about JSON and XML.

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation can be defined as a lightweight format for data interchange, and it is entirely language-independent. Being based on the JavaScript programming language, it is easy to understand and generate.

Example :

{"Ninjas":[

{ "firstName":"Kabir", "lastName":"Singh" },

{ "firstName":"Rahul", "lastName":"Kumar" },

{ "firstName":"Rohit", "lastName":"Oberoi" },

{ "firstName":"Samuel", "lastName":"Smith" }

]}

XML

Extensible Markup Language can now be defined as a language designed to carry data rather than display data. This can be said as a language that defines a set of rules that can be used to encode documents in a specific format readable by both humans and machines.

<Ninja>

<firstName>kabir</firstName> <lastName>singh</lastName>

</Ninja>

<Ninja>

<firstName>Rahul</firstName> <lastName>Kumar</lastName>

</Ninja>

<Ninja>

<firstName>Rohit</firstName> <lastName>Oberoi</lastName>

</Ninja>

<Ninja>

<firstName>Samuel</firstName> <lastName>Smith</lastName>

</Ninja>

Since we have seen JSON and XML, Now let’s see the differences between both of these:

Differences between JSON and XML

JSON	XML
JavaScript Object Notation	Extensible markup language
Based on JavaScript language	Derived from SGML
A way of representing objects	A markup language that uses tag structure to represent data items
It does not support namespaces	Does support namespaces
Does support arrays	It does not support arrays
Easy to read files	Difficult to interpret and read
Does not use end tags	Uses end tags
It is less secured	Way more secure than JSON
Comments are not supported	Comments are supported
Only UTF-8 encoding supported	Various types of encoding are supported

Now let us also have a look at some similarities between JSON and XML.

Similarities between JSON and XML

So the shared similarities between JSON and XML are as follows :

Both of these are self-readable
Both of them are hierarchical.
Both can be parsed and used by several programming languages.
Both can be fetched with an XMLHttpRequest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1: What is JSON?

Answer: JavaScript Object Notation can be defined as a lightweight format for data interchange, and it is entirely language-independent. Being based on the JavaScript programming language, it is easy to understand and generate.

Question 2: What is XML?

Answer: Extensible Markup Language can now be defined as a language designed to carry rather than display data. This can be said as a language that defines a set of rules that can be used to encode documents in a specific format readable by both humans and machines.

Question 3: Is JSON better than XML?

Answer: When we consider readability, then JSON is better, but as a whole, we can say that XML is more potent than JSON.

Key Takeaways

In this article, we went through the basic idea behind JSON and XML and saw some similarities and differences between them.

So, did you like this blog? And want to read more blogs on web development? Here are some blogs for you! Please have a look and also visit our platform CodeStudio for more interview problems!