Question

I have a web page which I want to send some JSON data down with. Currently, I put necessary information within hidden input tags, then I make a call to a webservice to retrieve extra data. I would like to know what ways are available to merge the calls together.

Answer 1

Not sure what you mean about merging the calls together, but I don’t see any reason for putting JSON data in hidden form fields. I’d just put it in a script tag as a JavaScript literal:

<script type='text/javascript'>
var myJSONData = {
    // ....
};
</script>

Since JSON is a subset of JavaScript object literal syntax, you can safely assume valid JSON is a valid JavaScript object literal.

For example, if your JSON is:

{ "Towel": "Always know where it is", "Answer": 42, "Author": "Douglas Adams"}

Then this is what the script tag would look like:

<script type='text/javascript'>
var myJSONData = { "Towel": "Always know where it is", "Answer": 42, "Author": "Douglas Adams"};
</script>