JSON — The Data Format of the Internet

When two systems need to exchange data — your frontend and your backend, your app and Stripe, your server and a database — they need a common language. That language, for the vast majority of the modern web, is JSON.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) isn't complicated. That's the whole point. It's a simple, human-readable text format for representing structured data. But understanding its rules, patterns, and quirks will save you hours of debugging.

What JSON Looks Like

JSON represents data using two structures: objects (key-value pairs) and arrays (ordered lists). That's it. Everything else builds from those two primitives.

{
  "name": "Jane Smith",
  "age": 28,
  "email": "jane@example.com",
  "isActive": true,
  "address": {
    "street": "123 Main St",
    "city": "Port