JSON and XML

Both JSON and XML can be used to receive data from a web server. The following JSON and XML examples both define an employees object, with an array of 3 employees:

---JSON---

{"employees":[
  { "firstName":"John", "lastName":"Doe" },
  { "firstName":"Anna", "lastName":"Smith" },
  { "firstName":"Peter", "lastName":"Jones" }
]}

--XML---

<employees>
     <employee>
       <firstName>John</firstName> <lastName>Doe</lastName>
      </employee>
      <employee>
          <firstName>Anna</firstName> <lastName>Smith</lastName>
  </employee>
  <employee>
    <firstName>Peter</firstName> <lastName>Jones</lastName>
   </employee>
</employees>

JSON

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format and it completely language independent. ... Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.

XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The World Wide Web Consortium's XML 1.0 Specification of 1998 and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards