Question

Many times my client ask me whether they will deliver data via XML feed or JSON strings. I usually say:

• XML if you already have a feed and do not have a web developer who will create script for generating JSON strings
• JSON if you do not have any feed and need to create any from the scratch

What do you say? Do you think that delivering data via XML feeds is obsolete and that XML is over-complicated and too heavy?

Should I advise all clients (for the sake of the future) to move onto JSON way of delivering data?

EDIT

From another discussion https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2636245/choosing-between-json-and-xml I can see that JSON is advised for web services, which is the most used case scenario in my clients. It seems that I was advising them properly.

1. What is they want to pass news articles onto a mobile device – shall I advise XML of JSON?

2. What about post&get cases when I need to post some data and the to get the response which will be displayed on user’s mobile device – XML or JSON?

Answer 1

If the consumers are browsers or mobile devices, I would recommend JSON.

1. Faster
2. Lighter
3. Native parsing support

If the consumers are other programs, I would recommend XML

1. Can be validated easily
2. Code generators available to make programming easy and is less error-prone