Difference between JSON and XML

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format and it completely language independent. It is based on the JavaScript programming language and easy to understand and generate.

Example :

Javascript

{"Geeks":[
    { "firstName":"Vivek", "lastName":"Kothari" },
    { "firstName":"Suraj", "lastName":"Kumar" },
    { "firstName":"John", "lastName":"Smith" },
    { "firstName":"Peter", "lastName":"Gregory" }
]}

XML (Extensible markup language) was designed to carry data, not to display data. It is a W3C recommendation. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The design goals of XML focus on simplicity, generality, and usability across the Internet. It is a textual data format with strong support via Unicode for different human languages. Although the design of XML focuses on documents, the language is widely used for the representation of arbitrary data structures such as those used in web services. 

Example :

XML

<Geeks>
    <Geek>
        <firstName>Vivek</firstName> <lastName>Kothari</lastName>
    </Geek>
    <Geek>
        <firstName>Suraj</firstName> <lastName>Kumar</lastName>
    </Geek>
    <Geek>
        <firstName>John</firstName> <lastName>Smith</lastName>
    </Geek>
    <Geek>
        <firstName>Peter</firstName> <lastName>Gregory</lastName>
    </Geek>
</Geeks>

Both of these are self-describing and can be parsed and used by lots of programming languages. Below are few differences between JSON and XML:

JSON	XML
It is JavaScript Object Notation	It is Extensible markup language
It is based on JavaScript language.	It is derived from SGML.
It is a way of representing objects.	It is a markup language and uses tag structure to represent data items.
It does not provides any support for namespaces.	It supports namespaces.
It supports array.	It doesn’t supports array.
Its files are very easy to read as compared to XML.	Its documents are comparatively difficult to read and interpret.
It doesn’t use end tag.	It has start and end tags.
It is less secured.	It is more secured than JSON.
It doesn’t supports comments.	It supports comments.
It supports only UTF-8 encoding.	It supports various encoding.