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How Can You Integrate A JSON Framework With iOS

What is JSON?

JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON in short, is commonly used for representing structural data and data interchange in client-server applications, serving as an alternative to XML. It has grown in popularity as it is simple to use and human-readable. It is technically a part of the JavaScript language and provides a way to serialize JavaScript objects. It is supported in a wide variety of programming languages. A lot of the services used every day have JSON-based APIs.

JSON has a simple syntax. At the basic level, a JSON document can contain objects, which are essentially key-value dictionaries or arrays. JSON can contain arrays of objects and arrays of values and can nest arrays and objects. Values stored in JSON arrays can be other JSON objects, strings, numbers, or arrays, or true, false, or null.

 

Uses of JSON

  • It is used to write JavaScript-based applications like browser extensions and websites. 
  • JSON provides a way to serialize Javascript objects. 
  • It is used to transfer data between a server and web applications. 
  • Web services and APIs use JSON framework to provide public data. 
  • It can be used with modern programming languages.
Difference between JSON and XML

The fundamental difference is, XML is a markup language, whereas JSON is a way of representing objects.

Why is JSON becoming so popular?

JSON is very quickly becoming the privileged data format globally due to the following big trends:

  1. APIs (application programming interfaces)
  2. Big Data
  3. The Internet of Things
  4. Full-stack JavaScript

The more lightweight JSON has become a popular alternative to XML for various reasons. JSON is less verbose, whereas XML uses more words than necessary. JSON is faster, parsing XML software is slow and troublesome.


About Apple iOS

Apple's iOS supports two different programming languages, Objective-C and Swift. You can use frameworks written in either language and share them across projects. That is, you can use older Objective-C frameworks in a Swift project.

There are two steps to connect to a JSON framework for iOS: First, identify the JSON API that will be utilized, and then parse the JSON.

  1. Connect to JSON API You can use an API into the project you are working on in Xcode. The NSJSONSerialization Class is required to connect to an API. This class can be used in both Objective-C and Swift.
  2. Parse JSON with iOS Frameworks There two ways for parsing JSON data:

Write a code to integrate JSON APIs into your project

Use one of the following frameworks,

  • JSONModel -- an Objective-C framework
  • JSONAPI-iOS -- an Objective-C framework
  • ObjectMapper -- a Swift framework
  • Spine -- a Swift framework
  • SwiftyJSON -- a Swift framework

A JSON framework should be used only if you are extending an older Objective-C project. Parsing and deserializing JSON is a little more tedious in Swift, due to options and type-safety. For a new Swift 2.0 project, JSON framework should be avoided as the code is too complex.

How to integrate iOS FrameWork for JSON Parsing?
  1. Create a new Xcode application following your own app architecture. 
  2. Integrate your Url in App that gives JSON data in response. 
  3. Create Connection and make a request with your JSON URL. 
  4. In Connection: DidFinishLoading, make a call to your parser class that will parse JSON data.

After completing the above steps, managing of the data is required. So mapping of directions, connecting business processes or the thousands of APIs, both public and private, available to iOS developers is done.

Advantages of Jason

There are many advantages to use JSON in an iOS app,

  • Server Support
    iOS apps need to communicate information to and fro from a remote server. There are several server languages which have built mobile app -in support for JSON making it a natural choice as a data format.

  • Lightweight
    JSON needs less formatting compared to XML and thus can provide a significant saving in the amount of bandwidth needed to transmit data between a server and a device.

  • iOS Support
    iOS 5 is fully equipped to support JSON, as it possesses the NSJSONSerialization class. This class can decode NSDictionary or NSArray from JSON data or can encode an NSDictionary or NSArray into JSON. Thus, with iOS’s built-in support for JSON, it is easy to integrate it into an iOS project

  • Presentation and Native Handling
    The simplest method to pull data from a server to an iOS device is to use a UIWebView and display a Web page. Few drawbacks are there in this process in terms of performance and presentation. It is much better to pull the data from the server, and present it on the device using native tools like UITableView. This will improve performance and presentation.


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