JSON Naming Convention snake case camelCase or PascalCase

Question

Is there a standard on JSON naming I see most examples using all lower case separated by underscore  aka snake case  but can it be used PascalCase or camelCase as well

User · Answer

Premise  There is no standard naming of keys in JSON  According to the Objects section of the spec      The JSON syntax does not impose any restrictions on the strings used as names       Which means camelCase or snake case should work fine   Driving factors  Imposing a JSON naming convention is very confusing  However  this can easily be figured out if you break it down into components    Programming language for generating JSON   Python - snake case PHP - snake case Java - camelCase JavaScript - camelCase  JSON itself has no standard naming of keys Programming language for parsing JSON   Python - snake case PHP - snake case Java - camelCase JavaScript - camelCase    Mix-match the components   Python    JSON    Python - snake case - unanimous Python    JSON    PHP - snake case - unanimous Python    JSON    Java - snake case - please see the Java problem below Python    JSON    JavaScript - snake case will make sense  screw the front-end anyways Python    JSON    you do not know - snake case will make sense  screw the parser anyways PHP    JSON    Python - snake case - unanimous PHP    JSON    PHP - snake case - unanimous PHP    JSON    Java - snake case - please see the Java problem below PHP    JSON    JavaScript - snake case will make sense  screw the front-end anyways PHP    JSON    you do not know - snake case will make sense  screw the parser anyways Java    JSON    Python - snake case - please see the Java problem below Java    JSON    PHP - snake case - please see the Java problem below Java    JSON    Java - camelCase - unanimous Java    JSON    JavaScript - camelCase - unanimous Java    JSON    you do not know - camelCase will make sense  screw the parser anyways JavaScript    JSON    Python - snake case will make sense  screw the front-end anyways JavaScript    JSON    PHP - snake case will make sense  screw the front-end anyways JavaScript    JSON    Java - camelCase - unanimous JavaScript    JSON    JavaScript - camelCase - Original   Java problem  snake case will still make sense for those with Java entries because the existing JSON libraries for Java are using only methods to access the keys instead of using the standard dot syntax  This means that it wouldn t hurt that much for Java to access the snake cased keys in comparison to the other programming language which can do the dot syntax   Example for Java s org json package  JsonObject getString  snake cased key    Example for Java s com google gson package  JsonElement getAsString  snake cased key    Some actual implementations   Google Maps JavaScript API - camelCased Facebook JavaScript API - snake cased Amazon Web Services - snake cased  amp  camelCased Twitter API - snake cased JSON-LD - camelCased  amp  ProperCamelCased   Conclusions  Choosing the right JSON naming convention for your JSON implementation depends on your technology stack  There are cases where one can use snake case  camelCase  or any other naming convention   Another thing to consider is the weight to be put on the JSON-generator vs the JSON-parser and or the front-end JavaScript  In general  more weight should be put on the JSON-generator side rather than the JSON-parser side  This is because business logic usually resides on the JSON-generator side   Also  if the JSON-parser side is unknown then you can declare what ever can work for you

User · Answer

Notably for me on NodeJS  if I m working with databases and my field names are underscore separated  I also use them in the struct keys    This is because db fields have a lot of acronyms abbreviations so something like appSNSInterfaceRRTest looks a bit messy but app sns interface rr test is nicer    In Javascript variables are all camelCase and class names  constructors  are ProperCase  so you d see something like  var devTask             task id  120          store id  2118          task name   generalLedger           or  generalLedgerTask   new GeneralLedgerTask  devTask      And of course in JSON keys strings are wrapped in double quotes  but then you just use the JSON stringify and pass in JS objects  so don t need to worry about that   I struggled with this a bit until I found this happy medium between JSON and JS naming conventions

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In this document Google JSON Style Guide  recommendations for building JSON APIs at Google    It recommends that    Property names must be camelCased  ASCII strings  The first character must be a letter  an underscore     or a dollar sign        Example         thisPropertyIsAnIdentifier    identifier value      My team follows this convention

User · Answer

As others have stated there is no standard so you should choose one yourself  Here are a couple of things to consider when doing so    If you are using JavaScript to consume JSON then using the same naming convention for properties in both will provide visual consistency and possibly some opportunities for cleaner code re-use  A small reason to avoid kebab-case is that the hyphens may clash visually with - characters that appear in values        bank-balance   -10

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Seems that there s enough variation that people go out of their way to allow conversion from all conventions to others  http   www cowtowncoder com blog archives cat json html  Notably  the mentioned Jackson JSON parser prefers bean naming

User · Answer

There is no SINGLE standard  but I have seen 3 styles you mention   Pascal Microsoft    Java   camelCase  and  C   underscores  snake case   -- as well as at least one more  kebab-case like longer-name    It mostly seems to depend on what background developers of the service in question had  those with c c   background  or languages that adopt similar naming  which includes many scripting languages  ruby etc  often choose underscore variant  and rest similarly  Java vs  NET   Jackson library that was mentioned  for example  assumes Java bean naming convention  camelCase   UPDATE  my definition of  standard  is a SINGLE convention  So while one could claim  yes  there are many standards   to me there are multiple Naming Conventions  none of which is  The  standard overall  One of them could be considered the standard for specific platform  but given that JSON is used for interoperability between platforms that may or may not make much sense

User · Answer

I think that there isn t a official naming convention to JSON  but you can follow some industry leaders to see how it is working   Google  which is one of the biggest IT company of the world  has a JSON style guide  https   google github io styleguide jsoncstyleguide xml  Taking advantage  you can find other styles guide  which Google defines  here  https   github com google styleguide

[json] JSON Naming Convention (snake_case, camelCase or PascalCase)

Premise

Driving factors

Mix-match the components

Java problem

Some actual implementations

Conclusions

Examples related to json

Examples related to camelcasing

Examples related to pascalcasing

Examples related to snakecasing