Serialisation formats

Data serialisation converts structured data to a format that allows sharing and or storing of the data. Before serialising data you have to decide how the data should be structured – flat or nested. The differences in the two styles are shown in the examples below:

Flat JSON style:

{
  "id"          :  "veit",
  "first_name"  :  "Veit",
  "last_name"   :  "Schiele",
}

Nested JSON style:

{
  "veit" : {
    "first_name"  :  "Veit",
    "last_name"   :  "Schiele",
  },
}