# Introduction

zend-json provides convenience methods for serializing native PHP to JSON and
decoding JSON to native PHP. For more information on JSON, [visit the JSON
project site](http://www.json.org/).

JSON, JavaScript Object Notation, can be used for data interchange between
JavaScript and other languages. Since JSON can be directly evaluated by
JavaScript, it is a more efficient and lightweight format than XML for
exchanging data with JavaScript clients.
