The current vogue is to use JSON as a transport format.

I second the use of JSON for transmitting data from one program to another. Because parsing JSON is generally quite easy and an "Array of Hashes" will become an "Array of Hashes" anywhere (or their language-specific equivalent) you can depend on a certain level of uniformity.

Also, since JSON is human-readable it is fairly easy to debug if you can get a dump of the JSON that is being transferred and parsed.

I would also think about using XML together with an XSD, if the client is not under your control. Having an XSD makes communication between you and the other developer(s) much easier, as changes to the protocol will be documented through the XSD.

Yes - XML + XSD (or even DTD) are more explicit and granular, and can serve for validation later on. If you prefer to stick with JSON all the way, you could use the emergent JSON Schema standard with JSON::Schema in your Perl and something else on the other end.

In reply to Re^2: How to transmit complex data to client? by jdrago999
in thread How to transmit complex data to client? by mattdeans

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