server response xml or json objects android

Question

I have an application which uses restful web services, the service returns a json object. I wanted to know , what would be better , returning a json or xml response?

Please help as i am new to the concept.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4862310/json-and-xml-comparison — KOTIOS, Jul 23 '13 at 07:07
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2316966/should-i-use-xml-or-json-as-a-data-format-in-android-applications — steevoo, Jul 23 '13 at 07:09

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:21

The answer is that it doesn't really matter. They are both almost equivalent. They use slightly different API's so go with the one you feel more comfortable with.

Example of JSON parsing in Android you can find in this question.

Example of XML parsing in Android you can find in this question.

The only reason I can think of to use XML over JSON is when your webservice responses are huge. JSON usually requires the entire response to arrive before you can start parsing. XML easily supports a pull parser which can start parsing "on the fly" before all the data arrives - which can be much more efficient. But if your responses are small, you don't really need all that.

If your existing webservice already returns a JSON object, this could be reason enough to stick with JSON.

server response xml or json objects android

1 Answers1