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javascriptjqueryjsonminify

How to minify JSON?

I recently got the following question in an interview.

How would you minify a JSON response?

{
 name: "sample name",
 product: "sample product",
 address: "sample address"
}

I don't know how to minify JSON and the implementation behind it. Can anyone please explain?

Thank you.

Solution

  • You can parse the JSON and then immediately re-serialize the parsed object:

    var myJson = `{
    "name": "sample name",
    "product": "sample product",
    "address": "sample address" 
}`;

// 'Minifying' the JSON string is most easily achieved using the built-in
// functions in the JSON namespace:
var minified = JSON.stringify(JSON.parse(myJson));

document.body.innerHTML = 'Result:<br>' + minified;

    You'll have to perform the minification server-side to get an improvement in response size. I suppose most languages support an equivalent to the above snippet. For example, in php one might write this (if your server runs php, of course):

    $myJson = '{
    "name": "sample name",
    "product": "sample product",
    "address": "sample address" 
}';

$minified = json_encode(json_decode($myJson));