Are references possible in JSON?

Question

Is it possible to assign references to objects in JSON? I have data that looks like this:

[{
  name:"name",
  Parent:[{
    name:"parentName"
    Parent:[{
       .....//and so on
    }]
  }]
}]

I need to traverse it in JavaScript and also change the person's name. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Old question but some possibly new answers like JSON Spec and JSON Reference https://json-spec.readthedocs.io/reference.html

[{
  "name": "John",
 },
 {
  "name" : "Jack",
  "parent": {"$ref": "#/0"}
 },
 ...
]

or possibly better with JSON Path syntax http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/

[{
  "name": "John",
 },
 {
  "name" : "Jack",
  "parent": {"$ref": "$.[?(@.name=='John')]"}
 }, 
...
]

Answer 2

You can't. You can specify the path to the parent as a string and evaluate that at runtime, but as JSON is just strings, integers, arrays, and dictionaries, you can't use references.