247AppsStudio Blog

JSON is pretty flexible when you want to pull data from MySQL database and feed it to the front end software such as Web-based applications or Desktop software or even Mobile applications like Android, iPhone, iPad. I’ll just give you a simple example that is running PHP to feed data to a front end app.

On the Android, you’ll build an interface that let user input a word in English (for example: eat), then hit the Submit button to translate this word into Italian and Vietnamese. Once the request transfer to the server, PHP will process the data and return an object that include a word with the same meaning in Italian and English. This is what you’ll build in your PHP page, so that Android app can call that page and pass the parameter as GET to the server.

switch(strtoupper($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'])){
 case 'GET':{
  $english = strtolower(trim($_REQUEST['par']));
  $t = $Db->GetRow("select * from $database_mns.android_evi_dictionary where english = @1@", $english);

  //build array lists of keys and values to feed the Object
  $ar_keys = array('comp_logo', 'developer_name', 'ip_address', 'english', 'italian', 'vietnamese');
  $ar_values = array('www.YourDomain.com/images/logo_jpg.jpg', 'Jane Doe', $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"], $t['english'], $t['italian'], iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", $t['Italian']));

  $obj = new stdClass();
  for($i=0;$i<count($ar_keys); $i++){
   $obj->{$ar_keys[$i]} = $ar_values[$i];
  }
  echo json_encode($obj);
  break;
 }
 default:{
  header('HTTP/1.0 405 Method Not Allowed');
 }
}

According to IT Wiki, JSON (/ˈdʒeɪsən/), or JavaScript Object Notation, is a text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects. Despite its relationship to JavaScript, it is language-independent, with parsers available for many languages.
The JSON format was originally specified by Douglas Crockford, and is described in RFC 4627. The official Internet media type for JSON is application/json. The JSON filename extension is .json.

The JSON format is often used for serializing and transmitting structured data over a network connection. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, serving as an alternative to XML.

Data types, syntax and example

JSON’s basic types are:

Number (double precision floating-point format in JavaScript, generally depends on implementation)
String (double-quoted Unicode, with backslash escaping)
Boolean (true or false)
Array (an ordered sequence of values, comma-separated and enclosed in square brackets; the values do not need to be of the same type)
Object (an unordered collection of key: value pairs with the ‘:’ character separating the key and the value, comma-separated and enclosed in curly braces; the keys must be strings and should be distinct from each other)
null (empty)

Non-significant white space may be added freely around the “structural characters” (i.e. the brackets “[{]}”, colon “:” and comma “,”).

The following example shows the JSON representation of an object that describes a person. The object has string fields for first name and last name, a number field for age, contains an object representing the person’s address, and contains a list (an array) of phone number objects.

{
    "firstName": "John",
    "lastName": "Doe",
    "age": 45,
    "address": {
        "streetAddress": "21 Vinson Street",
        "city": "New York",
        "state": "NY",
        "postalCode": "10251"
    },
    "phoneNumber": [
        {
            "type": "home",
            "number": "123 456-7899"
        },
        {
            "type": "fax",
            "number": "123 456-7889"
        }
    ]
}