.json File — JavaScript Object Notation

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data interchange format that has become the de facto standard for data exchange on the web. Created by Douglas Crockford in the early 2000s, JSON uses a subset of JavaScript syntax to represent structured data as human-readable text using key-value pairs (objects) and ordered lists (arrays). JSON supports six data types: strings, numbers, booleans, null, objects, and arrays. The format's simplicity, readability, and universal support across programming languages have made it the dominant format for REST APIs, configuration files, data storage, and inter-application communication. JSON is used by virtually every web API, stored in document databases like MongoDB and CouchDB, and serves as the configuration format for tools like package.json (npm), tsconfig.json (TypeScript), and VS Code settings. JSON Schema provides a vocabulary for validating JSON data structure. While JSON lacks features like comments and trailing commas (addressed by JSON5 and JSONC variants), its simplicity is a strength that has contributed to its universal adoption. JSON parsing and generation libraries exist in every major programming language.