how to hide a json object from source code of a page??

Question

iam using json object in my php file but i dont want my json object to be displayed in source code as it increases my page size a lot.

this is what im doing in php

$json = new Services_JSON();
$arr = array();
$qs=mysql_query("my own query");
while($obj = mysql_fetch_object($qs))
{
    $arr[] = $obj;
}
$total=sizeof($arr);
$jsn_obj='{"abc":'.$json->encode($arr).',"totalrow":"'.$total.'"}';

and this is javascript

echo '<script language=\'javascript\'>
var dataref = new Object();
dataref = eval('.$jsn_obj.');
</script>';

but i want to hide this $jsn_obj objects value from my source,how can i do that??? plz help !!

Answer 1

Instead of writing the JSON date directly to the document instead you can use an XMLHttpRequest in or use a library like JQuery to load the JSON data during script runtime.

Answer 2

I'm not sure there's a way around your problem, other than to change your mind about whether it's a problem at all (it's not, really).

You can't use the JSON object in your page if you don't output it. The only other way to get the object would be to make a separate AJAX request for it. If you did it that way, you're still transferring the exact same number of bytes that you would have originally, but now you've added the overhead of an extra HTTP request (which will be larger than it would have been originally, since there are now HTTP headers on the transfer). This way would also be slower on your page load, since you'd have to load the page, then send the AJAX request and run the result.

There's much better ways to manage the size of your pages. JSON is just text, so you should look into a server-side solution to zip your content, like mod_deflate. mod_deflate works beautifully on dynamic PHP output as well as static pages. If you don't have control over your web server, you could use PHP's built in zlib compression.

Answer 3

It depends largely on your json data. If the data you're printing inline in the html is huge you might wanna consider using ajax to load the json data. That is assuming you wanted your page to be loaded faster, even without data.

If the data isn't that big, try to keep the data inline, without making extra http requests. To speed up your page, try using YSlow! to see what other areas you could optimize.