When you’re working with JSON, performance and security are often opposing, yet equally important concerns. One of these areas of contention is handling the JSON strings returned by a server. Most JavaScript libraries do a great job of abstracting away the details, but the underlying process has long been a frustrating exercise in compromise.

On one hand, eval() is the fastest widely available method, but it is not safe.

On the other hand, textual JSON parsers written in JavaScript may be much safer, but are dramatically slower. In client-side situations, where milliseconds count, such a large performance overhead is typically too prohibitive to accept.

Recently, an exciting new alternative has emerged: browser-native JSON parsing. Integrating JSON parsing as part of the browser’s implementation of JavaScript allows for using the more secure parsing method, and even provides performance faster than eval() offers.

To take advantage of that, this post will show you how to detect whether or not a browser supports native JSON parsing, and how to force jQuery to use browser-native parsing in its $.ajax calls when it is available.

Click here to continue reading: Improving jQuery's JSON performance and security