JSON in non-Javascript applications

Question

I'm looking to persist and retrieve a large amount of key-value pair(s) type data over the wire. Is it appropriate for me to use JSON for this purpose against XML? Is JSON used in non-Javascript applications? Are there advantages using JSON for this purpose over good old XML?

Accepted Answer

JSON is fine for this use, and will be more compact than XML. (We're using it extensively in a non-Javascript application, and allow consumers of our REST web services to specify if they want the data in XML, JSON, or even XHTML representations.)

Update: Where bandwidth is a concern, you can probably get a 50-70% compression by GZIP-encoding/decoding your XML or JSON. See GZipStream.

JSON in non-Javascript applications

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