Is it valid to define functions in JSON results?

Question

Part of a website's JSON response had this (... added for context):

{..., now:function(){return(new Date).getTime()}, ...}

Is adding anonymous functions to JSON valid? I would expect each time you access 'time' to return a different value.

Answer 1

No.

JSON is purely meant to be a data description language. As noted on http://www.json.org, it is a "lightweight data-interchange format." - not a programming language.

Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON, the "basic types" supported are:

• Number (integer, real, or floating point)
• String (double-quoted Unicode with backslash escaping)
• Boolean (true and false)
• Array (an ordered sequence of values, comma-separated and enclosed in square brackets)
• Object (collection of key:value pairs, comma-separated and enclosed in curly braces)
• null