Glossary Format
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
JSON is a text format for structured data, commonly used in APIs, configuration files, logs, and automation workflows.
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a small text format for structured data. It represents values as objects, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans, and null.
JSON is everywhere because it is easy for software to read and easy enough for people to inspect. Web APIs return it, logs often contain it, and many tools use it for configuration or machine-readable output.
It is not especially friendly for long hand-written files. No comments, strict quoting, and easy-to-miss commas can make large JSON documents fiddly. For configuration written mainly by people, YAML is common; for data exchanged between programs, JSON is usually the simpler bet.