jquery - difference between $.getJSON and $.get

Question

Is there really a difference in these two calls? If you use getJSON, you still have to declare format=json in the url...

And you can do the same in $.get(), and iterate through the JSON-object.

Or am I way off here?

Answer 1

The following two snippets are equivalent:

$.get("/some/url", {data: "value"}, function(json) { 
  // use json here
}, "json")

$.getJSON("/some/url", {data: "value"}, function(json) {
  // use json here
});

Saying that a request is for JSON means two things:

• jQuery sends an Accept: application/json header
• jQuery interprets the inbound response, converts it into a JavaScript Object, and passes it into the callback (so you don't have to mess with eval or other conversion mechanism).

A number of server-side frameworks (such as Rails) automatically detect the Accept header and handle the request appropriately. If you are using a different framework or rolling your own, you can inspect the Accept header to detect the format (instead of inspecting the parameters).