Whilst attending the UKOUG Tech16 conference, several of the talks I attended mentioned the use of JSON (or to give it’s full name JavaScript Object Notation) These talks made me realise how little I actually knew about this Data Interchange Format.

There are many resources for learning JSON, from websites of varying quality to paid for video courses on Pluralsight or for free on YouTube. However my favourite method of learning something new is by reading book(s) and then conducting experiments using what I have learnt. So I chose the following: Introduction to Javascript Object Notation by Lindsay Bassett.  I chose this title as it had a good review and at just over 100 pages was not going to be a door stop that I will never finish.

The book begins with an overview of JSON, it’s syntax, the available datatypes and validating your JSON documents using JSON Schema before switching gears and moving on to demonstrate how JSON can be used in client and server side frameworks and NoSQL databases.

The book was a pleasure to read, new concepts are concisely introduced and no assumptions of your knowledge are made and having now read it I am far more confident in my understanding of this latest Interchange Format.

If you are looking to get up and running with JSON it is easy for me to recommend this book.