Problem
How can I use ColdFusion to work with JSON?
Solution
ColdFusion has native support for both creating and converting JSON data. These functions are: serializeJSON, deserializeJSON, and isJSON.
Detailed explanation
JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. You can think of it as a way to represent data (and type of data) in a string. This makes the data easy to pass between the client side and the server side and is a favorite format for use with AJAX based applications.
ColdFusion adds three functions that work with JSON: serializeJSON(), deserializeJSON(), and isJSON(). Let's look first at serializeJSON. You can take any arbitrary ColdFusion data and translate it into JSON using the function:
<cfset foo = arrayNew(1)> <cfset foo[1] = "Ray"> <cfset foo[2] = "Camden"> <cfset s = structNew()> <cfset s.age = 35> <cfset s.arr = foo> <cfset js = serializeJSON(s)>
This creates a JSON string that looks like so:
{"AGE":35.0,"ARR":["Ray","Camden"]}
This could be passed to the client via AJAX. On the flip
side, you can use deserializeJSON to translate a JSON string back
into native ColdFusion data:
<cfset orig = deserializeJSON(js)>
And to be extra careful, you can first check to see if the string is valid JSON:
<cfif isJSON(js)> <cfset orig = deserializeJSON(js)> </cfif>
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