Question

I’m new to JSON and from what I’ve read it seems pretty difficult to send a date. I need to send several dates using PHP.

I also need to send an image which I’m thinking would be best done using a base64 encoded string. Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

JSON itself does not support sending a Date object directly. You can, however, send the timestamp of the date you’re working with as a mere number and use

var myDate = new Date( jsonObject.timestamp );

to recreate a Date object. Note here, that PHP uses timestamps based on seconds ( see, e.g., here), whereas JavaScript uses milliseconds as a basis (see, e.g., here)!

For images I agree, that sending them in a Base64 encoded form is the best way of doing it, if those images are created dynamically or should not be accessible using a URL.

If they are accessible using a URL, sending this URL instead of the image is, of course, preferable.