JSON or JavaScript Object Notation is a lightweight data format which can be either represented as a hash of properties and values or as a list of values.
What Exactly is Parsing JSON
Parsing means to separate into parts. When a server receive JSON as a data, it comes as a massive concatenation of characters (i.e. a huge string of data). Inside of that string there is an encoded tags as well as "name value" pairs. The parser takes this huge string and break it up into a data structures or say objects.
Ways of Parsing JSON in Node.js
There are number of ways in which you can parse JSON in Node.js and they are as follows.
1. Passing a string containing JSON data
If you have a string which contains JSON data then you can use JSON.parse(). The JSON.parse() method parses a string as JSON, and optionally transfroming the value produced by parsing.
Examples are
JSON.parse('{ "name1": "Coding", "name2": "Defined" }');
JSON.parse('null');
2. Parsing a file containing JSON data using file-system module
If you have a file, lets say (config.json) then you will have to do some file operations with fs module as shown below :
Asynchronous Version
var fs = require('fs');
var jsonData = '';
fs.readFile('./config.json', 'utf8', function (err, data) {
if(err) throw err;
jsonData = JSON.parse(data);
});
Synchronous Version
var fs = require('fs');
var jsonData = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync('./config.json', 'utf8'));
3. Parsing a file containing JSON data using require module
The require() function in Node.js can read both .js and .json files. If a file ends with .js, the file is parsed and interpreted as a JavaScript file whereas if a file ends with .json, the file is parsed and interpreted as a JSON text file as shown below :
var config = require('./config.json');
console.log(config);
console.log('Value of Value1 is ' + config.value1);
console.log(config);
console.log('Value of Value1 is ' + config.value1);
4. Parsing a file using jsonfile module
If you have a large number of .json files then you can use jsonfile module as shown below.
var jf = require('jsonfile');
var jsonData = jf.readFileSync('./config.json');
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