JSON or CSV? Which Data Formatting to Consider While Using Stock API
Tags: JSON, javascript, beginners, ruby
Published: 2020-04-23 00:19:04

You might be struggling with displaying charts & graphs on your website but are clueless about which data formatting to use. Stock APIs give the visitors live real-time historical financial and stock market data. 

We have nowadays many options to integrate these APIs in different formats to get the results, but on this stage, I will be discussing the pros & cons of only two methods. 

Through JSON
Through CSV

There are many paid and free APIs in the market which you can use like https://fmpcloud.io/. You can also find both JSON and CSV file for practice from this website. 

Before we dig deeper, there are some must attribute that one must look for while addressing the API for Stock. 
  

Let me give you a brief intro to JSON & CSV and then we will move forward to discuss a detailed analysis of both objects.


JSON is a syntax used for exchanging data abbreviated as “JavaScript Object Notation”. It is light-weight data interchange and a language-independent format. 

Structurally, data is presented on the basis of name/Value pair, Curly braces to hold objects followed by colon and name/value pair are separated by commas. The Square brackets are used to configure arrays & values. JSON is supported by all the programming languages like Java, Net (C#), PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc thus giving it an extra edge. The file extension name is denoted as “.js”.


While CSV is a delimited text file that is based on separating the files using commas and it is abbreviated as “Comma Separated Value”.  In a CSV file, Tabular data is stored in plain text separated by commas so that’s why it is termed as “Comma Separated”. 
The file extension name is denoted as “.csv”. 

It is considered as the most compact file format among others and is about half the size of the JSON file. Structurally, each line consists of the data record, and each record further consists of one or more fields separated by commas. Each record ends with a line terminator. It is supported by multiple platforms. 

Both are the admired choice of folks and are used according to their needs. Let’s discuss some of the key differences and evaluate which is a better choice for you. 

Hierarchical Aspect

In terms of hierarchy, JSON is better among showing hierarchical and other relational data in comparison with CSV. While CSV is considered weak in terms of organized data processing. So, CSV does not support hierarchies at all. 


Scalability Aspect

JSON is recommended more when you are dealing with a larger set of data and the scalability is easy to manage when you are to deal with additions. While CSV is limited in its functionalities but is perfect for handling smaller sets of data. Most of the new APIs are restful and support natively JSON formatting, so JSON has an extra advantage over CSV. 

In any case, while stacking the enormous volume of data and changing over into the other form like Excel sheet, at that point Excel will not follow the protocols and not be able to keep the CSV standards, despite the fact that everything is characterized appropriately in the CSV file.

File Size Aspect 

In JSON, it is essentially simpler to work and predominantly utilized for the programming  Languages but the file size turns out to be double than CSV document when a great deal of data is required or kept up in records. So CSV is perfect for in term of managing big data in a compact form. 


JSON is more versatile and can manage complex data very easily. While CSV addresses the bandwidth issues related to the large set of data. So it is always my recommendation to use JSON based on the brief analysis I did in the above section but, at the same time, also it depends on the requirements of the user. If you can configure well and are satisfied with any of the methods, you can go for that one. Let me know in the comment section about the experience you faced while using any of the formattings.