JSON

JSON stands for “JavaScript Object Notation”. It’s something I have been learning a lot about this week. When I made my post about JavaScript is Messy I didn’t understand as much about how messy it is as I do now!¹
When I wrote about dot notation and bracket notation last week, I thought they were interchangeable. Actually, they aren’t. There are symbols you can use in your bracket notation that you can’t use in dot notation (and symbols that work that you shouldn’t use anyway!). Jason Ellis has gone over all of this information already and I will link you to his excellent Grok-Interactive blog article about it.

But JSON format, at least for me, helps because it’s very consistent. And the best part is this JSONLint checker. Plug your data into that, and it will show you exactly where your mistakes are in your format, and how to fix them. Thank you Udacity for pointing me to that resource!

Here are some of the best resources I’ve found this week:

Fear and Loathing’s list of JSON Resources

SquareSpace’s tutorial on JSON and how it works behind the scenes in a blog post.

Copterlabs article on making JSON do work nicely with AJAX. Technically some of the things they talk about in this article are beyond me, but I have a feeling I will need this information later.

Mastering Javascript Arrays 

¹_{Yes I know that was only a week ago.}