File Naming Conventions .json or .js?

Question

So, I'm trying to create some helpful JSON files that other can use to prototype out applications using State JSON data with image names that correspond to actual images I have in the same directory.

Here are my files : https://github.com/tannerjt/state_images.json

My question is this... since JSON is just javascript, should I use .json or .js for files.

One of my files is technically JSON, but I named it states.js, since it is an array of javascript object...

[
  {
    "name": "Alabama",
    "abbreviation": "AL",
    "capital": "",
    "image": {
      "image_name": "alabama.jpg",
      "location": "Monte Sano State Park",
      "credit": {
        "author": "Wes Thomas (BamaWester on Flickr)",
        "url": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/bamawester/3493269235/"
      }
    }
  },....
]

Because I called it a .js file, I added

var states = [{...

to the beginning. With it being an Array of json object... JSONlint still validated it.

Any thoughts? I want to make this useful for people to play around with, but not sure how I name the files correctly.

Answer 1

if you included var states = [{... in your raw text and tried to parse the thing as a json object, it would probably fail. Saving it as a .json file and leaving it only with data would be a preferred option.