How to get JSON from URL in JavaScript?

Question

You can use jQuery .getJSON() function:

$.getJSON('http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20%2a%20from%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20WHERE%20symbol%3D%27WRC%27&format=json&diagnostics=true&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys&callback', function(data) {
    // JSON result in `data` variable
});

If you don't want to use jQuery you should look at this answer for pure JS solution: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2499647/1361042

If you want to do it in plain javascript, you can define a function like this:

var getJSON = function(url, callback) {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('GET', url, true);
    xhr.responseType = 'json';
    xhr.onload = function() {
      var status = xhr.status;
      if (status === 200) {
        callback(null, xhr.response);
      } else {
        callback(status, xhr.response);
      }
    };
    xhr.send();
};

And use it like this:

getJSON('http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20%2a%20from%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20WHERE%20symbol%3D%27WRC%27&format=json&diagnostics=true&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys&callback',
function(err, data) {
  if (err !== null) {
    alert('Something went wrong: ' + err);
  } else {
    alert('Your query count: ' + data.query.count);
  }
});

Note that data is an object, so you can access its attributes without having to parse it.

With Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Webview you can natively use the fetch API which makes this a lot easier, and much more terse.

If you need support for IE or older browsers, you can also use the fetch polyfill.

let url = 'https://example.com';

fetch(url)
.then(res => res.json())
.then(out =>
  console.log('Checkout this JSON! ', out))
.catch(err => throw err);

MDN: Fetch API

Even though Node.js does not have this method built-in, you can use node-fetch which allows for the exact same implementation.

ES8(2017) try

obj = await (await fetch(url)).json();

async function load() {
    let url = 'https://my-json-server.typicode.com/typicode/demo/db';
    let obj = await (await fetch(url)).json();
    console.log(obj);
}

load();

you can handle errors by try-catch

async function load() {
    let url = 'http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/publ...';
    let obj = null;
    
    try {
        obj = await (await fetch(url)).json();
    } catch(e) {
        console.log('error');
    }
    
    console.log(obj);
}

load();

Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and node.js.

It offers automatic transforms for JSON data and it's the official recommendation from the Vue.js team when migrating from the 1.0 version which included a REST client by default.

Performing a GET request

// Make a request for a user with a given ID
axios.get('http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/publ...')
  .then(function (response) {
    console.log(response);
  })
  .catch(function (error) {
    console.log(error);
  });

Or even just axios(url) is enough as a GET request is the default.

Define a function like:

fetchRestaurants(callback) {
    fetch(`http://www.restaurants.com`)
       .then(response => response.json())
       .then(json => callback(null, json.restaurants))
       .catch(error => callback(error, null))
}

Then use it like this:

fetchRestaurants((error, restaurants) => {
    if (error) 
        console.log(error)
    else 
        console.log(restaurants[0])

});

async function fetchDataAsync(url) {
    const response = await fetch(url);
    console.log(await response.json());
}

fetchDataAsync('paste URL');