JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is the standard syntax used when dealing with data in JavaScript as well as most other languages and web services. The basic premise of JSON is that it looks exactly like a standard JavaScript object with a few strict exceptions:

• JSON is pure text. There are no data types with properties; that is, date values are stored as strings and so on
• All names and string values must be in double quotes
• There can be no functions as properties

Let's take a quick look at a pretty standard JSON object:

{ 
  "title": "This is the title", 
  "description": "Here is where the description would be", 
  "page-count": 150, 
  "authors": [ 
    { "name": "John Smith" }, 
    { "name": "Jane Doe" }, 
    { "name": "Andrea Johnson" } 
  ], 
  "id": "1234-567-89012345" 
} 

If you are at all familiar with XML, JSON is somewhat similar, except it is much easier to read and make sense out of. As described best by the ECMA, "JSON is a text format that facilitates structured data interchange between all programming languages".