Dumb question - can json encoded things be used in all programming languages

[Guest]

Say if I were to encode something with PHP, then decode it with Python.

 

Would that work? Thanks!

[Gavination]

Short Answer: If I understand your question correctly, and if it's JSON, then sure. Should totally work. Think of an API that exposes REST calls and supplies JSON data. You don't care what that API was written in; what matters is the JSON payload. 

 

Long Answer: The "how" is language dependent. In C# (my go-to language), you have to de-serialize it when it comes in before working with the data and serialize it before sending it out again. Other languages may have their quirks as well, but just look for a Python JSON decoding library. It's Python, so if you're using version 2.6 or later, there is a library built-in that can handle it for you. See this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2331943/how-to-decode-json-with-python

Happy Hacking!

[mariushm]

Don't see why not, the json format is standardized so you could write a decoder/parser in any language^*if the language has no built in support for it

 

http://www.json.org/ has all you need to know to read/write json

 

^* if you want to be an ass about it you could probably find some weird language with some whacky rules or limitations that would make reading json encoded files hard or impossible. In general people should stay away from words like "any".

[burnttoastnice]

I've had success decoding JSON in PHP, Javascript and Python. Just not C# though. A whole load of languages have support for decoding JSON.

[SpaceNugget]

Yes, JSON is just text, so any language that can handle text strings can 'read' JSON. Most languages have JSON parsing libraries to make dealing with it simple too.

[shapeshiftinglizard]

Unless the language doesn't have a library for JSON, then it isn't, but even in that case one could write their own JSON parser. I personally prefer the rather obscure SDLang for most thing and XML if I need to embed data or scripts, processing instructions are pretty excellent for this application (see PHP) if not very standard.

[Gavination]

On 5/7/2017 at 4:33 AM, burnttoastnice said:

I've had success decoding JSON in PHP, Javascript and Python. Just not C# though. A whole load of languages have support for decoding JSON.

JSON.NET is your best friend for C#. I don't know a .NET dev that doesn't use it.