JSON vs. GSON vs. BSON

JavaScript Object Notation, also known as JSON, is one of the most accepted formats for transferring data with attribute-value pairs and array data types between web apps and servers. It uses human-type readable texts to do so. In some cases, it is also used in desktop and server-side programming.

Meanwhile, BSON, also known as Binary JSON, is a serialization format that we use in MongoDB when we store documents in collections. It can provide support for different data types like Date and binary, which aren’t supported by JSON.

GSON is an open-source library developed by Google that we use to serialize Java objects and convert them into their JSON representation. In simple words, it is a converter.

Let us take a detailed look at their benefits and differences between them.

Benefits of JSON

JSON provides similar benefits as XML but is better in a lot of ways.

Speed: JSON can parse any program much faster than XML. JSON uses lesser information compared to other parsers, which reduces the pressure on the system and boosts the parsing speed.
Accepted Everywhere: Thanks to the hierarchical structure of JSON strings, some applications can interpret them even if they don’t know what data to expect.
Simple and Readable: JSON consists of simple, readable texts. This allows us to send data to different platforms and operating systems. This makes file transfer much easier as some OS and platforms don’t share complex document formats. The readability of JSON strings also allows us to display and edit them in text editors.
Structured Data: JSON uses a tree structure. This allows you to easily understand the information provided.
Lesser Space Consumption: JSON strings are a lot more compact than their XML counterparts. A JSON string will only consume two-thirds of what an XML string will consume.

Benefits of BSON

Here are some benefits of BSON.

Greater Support: Unlike JSON, BSON supports dates and binary data types.
Smaller: Records of BSON are smaller compared to JSON records. That is why we use it in MongoDB.
Convenient: If you use the BSON sort arrangement, you can traverse through the data quickly. It is also very lightweight. You can build indexes inside a BSON object, and you can match those objects against query expressions on the top level.
Requires Less Information: BSON does not require much information to operate. Just use the native and supplied types of the language, and BSON will automatically do the mapping.

JSON vs. BSON

Now, let us take a quick look at their differences.

	JSON	BSON
Encoding	UTF-8 String	Binary
What types of data it supports	String, Boolean, number, array	String, number, array, Boolean, dates, raw binary
Who can read	Humans and machine	Machine

JSON and BSON may seem similar, but they have their differences. BSON is the best way to transfer large amounts of data as JSON format can be wasteful sometimes. Also, converting a JSON text into a BSON is much faster than compressing it. And, BSON can differentiate between integers and floating-point numbers.

But you cannot read BSON language as it is written in binary. You need to convert it back into readable languages.

If you want to transfer data in a simpler language so that humans can read and edit it, then you should send it in JSON format. But if you want to transfer lots of data without wasting too much space, then BSON can be more useful to you.

GSON

While JSON and BSON are file formats that you use to transfer data in human-readable or binary languages, GSON is a library used to convert various Java objects to JSON and vice-versa.

It is completely open-source, and you can take a look at its contents from here. You can also check out the detailed user guide on GSON.

Benefits of GSON

Standardized: It is a library managed by Google and used by everyone.
Efficiency: This is an extension to the Java standard library and is very fast, efficient, and reliable.
Optimization: This library is optimized to run properly on most devices.
Available to All: Since anyone can access the code, programmers can contribute their part to make this library better and optimized.
Supports Complex Classes: GSON supports complex objects with deep inheritance hierarchies.

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