JSON Page Format in BYOND Discussion

ID:132716
 
Dec 11 2009, 4:58 pm
BYOND's savefile format is nice for retrieving information from within BYOND games, but a more standard format would be helpful to do this from within other applications or websites. Thus, it would be nice if the website provided a format=json option in addition to format=text.
#1 Dec 12 2009, 6:33 am
I had never even heard of JSON before and had to look it up when I just read this. Is it even widely used at all? Why not just use XML? Are there advantages to using JSON over XML? The only advantage I saw in Wikipedia was that, due to the way JSON handles some things, its file size could be a bit smaller.
#2 Dec 12 2009, 7:07 am (Edited on Dec 12 2009, 11:14 am)
In response to Loduwijk (#1)
JSON's popularity has risen with the use of AJAX. Most web services have an option to return data in this format (e.g. APIs like Yahoo's and Facebook's). It's especially popular in combination with JavaScript, but most languages have libraries to use JSON (Python's is built-in, I believe). Google returns a lot of results for 'JSON vs XML'. These links might be helpful:

The most relevant point is probably this:
JSON is a better data exchange format. XML is a better document exchange format. Use the right tool for the right job.

JSON is also closer to BYOND's savefile format and as you saw, probably going to be a bit smaller than XML.

That said, I wouldn't have a problem with using XML, either.