JSON Compatibility

JSON compatibility in Internet Object.

Internet Object is designed to be friendly to JSON. A large subset of JSON values parses directly, and most Internet Object data converts cleanly to JSON.

JSON parses as Internet Object

Quoted-key object syntax and quoted strings, arrays, numbers, booleans, and null are valid Internet Object. A JSON object can be used as a record as-is:

---
{"name": "John", "age": 30, "active": true}

The idiomatic Internet Object form drops the quotes and repeated keys by moving them into the schema:

name, age, active: bool
---
John, 30, true

Differences

• Keys — Internet Object keys may be unquoted; JSON requires quotes. Both are accepted.

• Booleans / null — Internet Object also allows the compact forms T, F, N.

• Comments — Internet Object allows # comments; JSON does not. Comments are dropped when converting to JSON.

• Schema — Internet Object carries an optional schema/header that JSON has no equivalent for; on conversion it becomes external (or is dropped).

Lossy cases (IO → JSON)

Some Internet Object types have no exact JSON counterpart and convert approximately:

Internet Object	JSON representation
decimal (1.50m)	number or string (precision/scale not preserved by JSON numbers)
bigint (123n)	number (may lose precision) or string
datetime / date / time	ISO-8601 string
binary (b'…')	base64 string
NaN, Inf, -Inf	not representable in JSON (often null or a string)

For exact round-trips, keep the data in Internet Object form.

See Also

• Converting To/From Other Formats

• Why Internet Object?