Native JSON support in iOS?

Question

Is there a class to parse JSON from a server in the iOS SDK? (similar to NSXML for XML and by extension RSS.)

Answer 1

Updated answer for iOS 5:

JSON support is now native to iOS with NSJSONSerialization, but in terms of performance, it pales in comparison to JSONKit, as John Englehart stated in the JSONKit README:

UPDATE: (2011/12/18) The benchmarks below were performed before Apples NSJSONSerialization was available (as of Mac OS X 10.7 and iOS 5). The obvious question is: Which is faster, NSJSONSerialization or JSONKit? According to this site, JSONKit is faster than NSJSONSerialization. Some quick "back of the envelope" calculations using the numbers reported, JSONKit appears to be approximately 25% to 40% faster than NSJSONSerialization, which is pretty significant.

Here's a blog post which delves into more specific benchmarks: JSON Libraries for iOS Comparison

Answer 2

As of iOS5 JSON is been natively supported, no need for 3rd party frameworks. This is supported by the NSJSONSerialization Class!

Answer 3

NextiveJson is supposed to be quite a fast lib for iOS JSON NextiveJson

Answer 4

There are several JSON libraries for the iPhone listed in this thread: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/286087/best-json-library-to-use-when-developing-an-iphone-application

Answer 5

Regarding JSONKit benchmarks, for the current moment and iOS version it's not so fast. After creating test application for testing speed NSJSONSerialization is faster but not so fast as custom implementation OKJSONParser