Does jQuery have built in JSON support?

Question

Does jQuery have built in JSON support or must I use a plugin like jquery.json-1.3.min.js ?

Answer 1

Yes, absolutely it does. You can do something like:

$.getJSON('/foo/bar/json-returning-script.php', function(data) {
    // data is the JSON object returned from the script.
});

Answer 2

You can also use $.ajax and set the dataType option to "json":

 $.ajax({
      url: "script.php",
      global: false,
      type: "POST",
      data: ({id : this.getAttribute('id')}),
      dataType: "json",
      success: function(json){
         alert(json.foo);
      }
   }
);

Also, $.get and $.post have an optional fourth parameter that allows you to set the data type of the response, e.g.:

$.postJSON = function(url, data, callback) {
    $.post(url, data, callback, "json");
};

$.getJSON = function(url, data, callback) {
    $.get(url, data, callback, "json");
};

Answer 3

jQuery's JSON support is simplistic, throwing caution to the wind. I've used $.ajax and then parse the response text with the json.org javascript library. It lexically parses to avoid using eval() and possibly executing arbitrary code.

Answer 4

jQuery supports decoding JSON, but does not support encoding out-of-the-box. For encoding, you'll need a plugin, a separate library, or a browser that supports the JSON.stringify and JSON.parse commands natively.