Json2/Json3 library required still?

Question

Quick question. Is there any need to include the Json2 library anymore? Did I read somewhere that JavaScript supports JSON as standard these days so there's no need to parse it anymore?

Any advantages or disadvantages to Json2 vs standard JavaScript support?

Answer 1

JSON was standardised in ECMAScript 5, so browsers that conform to that specification include JSON, but others browsers don't (such as those that were released before ECMAScript 5/ IE). If you need to support these browsers, you still need to include it.

Specifically, JSON was introduced in:

• IE8,
• FireFox 3.5 -
• Opera 10.5.
• Chrome (1) (AFAIK)

json2.js checks whether JSON.parse is already implemented, and only provides it's implementation if it doesn't; so think of it as a sort of polyfiller for older browsers.

^{Sources: http://kangax.github.com/es5-compat-table/, http://caniuse.com/#feat=json}