Suppose I want to return JSON content
var content = {
a: 'foo',
b: 'bar'
};
What is the best practice to return my JSON data?
A) Return object as is; i.e res.end(content)?
B) JSON.stringify(content) and then call JSON.parse(content) on the client?
If you send the response with express's res.json you can send the Object directly as application/json encoded response.
app.get('/route/to/ressource', function(req, res){
var oMyOBject = {any:'data'};
res.json(oMyOBject);
});
res.send() has already done the stringify works, whatever you did, client will always receives the JSON formatted data.
.send will do it for you, and you can do app.set('json spaces', '\t') if you want formatted output.The client must always send a string. That's what the protocol says. After all, HTTP is a wide-ranging protocol, and not all languages support JSON objects, let alone JavaScript data.
If you don't convert it to a JSON string, chances are that pure Node will just send it as [object Object], and i'm sure that's not your intention.
As mentioned previously, Express lets you send an actual JS object, and does the JSON string converting for you. Alternately, you can manually convert it.
res.json() does the conversion internally? Also if I am sending a string from the server, I will require JSON.parse(data) on the browser?
$.getJSON() method, it does the JSON.parse() internally also.