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iOS

Posted by Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent
Courses Plus Student 1,148 Points

XML or JSON in Swift Development?

Hi there, I am currently going through the Swift courses under the IOS development track.

I am working towards building apps that communicate back and forth with web-servers, and in the past have always used XML as my primary data transport.

I'm wondering if its time to rethink wether to continue providing server data to apps as XML, or is it more appropriate to adopt JSON? (I'm new to JSON as well)

I'm hoping to make sure to follow a good practice, and am thinking that XML is more structured (even though there is some data overhead) but from what I've seen so far, it seems that in Xcode, Swift and apple environments, JSON is more widely supported.

Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated - also if there is any specific courses I should review that relate to this topic that would be a huge help as well!

Thanks in advance! Ted

2 Answers

agreatdaytocode
agreatdaytocode
24,757 Points

Hi Ted,

Check out the course "Build a Weather App with Swift". It covers both network calls and JSON.

Ted Nugent
PLUS
Ted Nugent
Courses Plus Student 1,148 Points
Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent
Courses Plus Student 1,148 Points

That's great - just started that course and so far it seems very helpful. However they don't mention XML; is there anything that talks about using XML in a mac/ios environment?

Coming from my experience in the Microsoft paradigm (.net etc.) where XML was drilled into me, it strangely feels like XML is completely ignored on the apple side.

Either that, or is JSON really what devs are focusing on going forward?

Opinions are much appreciated!

agreatdaytocode
agreatdaytocode
24,757 Points

Many of the API's that I have worked with use JSON. The very first app I created I used XML and I regret it. However, with that said I think you will find that each have their pros and cons. Check out this post at stackoverflow