WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:04.560 Now I want to move on to data formats. So data formats is an exam objective. 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:08.800 So we have to have a general idea what a data format is and we're going to have to be able to 00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:14.960 read a certain type of data format for the certification exam. So what is a data format? 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:21.040 A data format is how the information is presented so that way it can be consumed. So the CLI is a 00:00:21.040 --> 00:00:27.840 data format. JSON is a data format. XML is a data format. YAML is a data format. So what do you use? 00:00:27.840 --> 00:00:32.480 Well, it really depends on who the consumer is. So if a human being is consuming it, 00:00:33.440 --> 00:00:37.120 CLI is pretty good. See, the CLI was created for human consumption. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:42.960 But things like JSON, YAML, and XML, they're not really designed for human consumption. 00:00:43.520 --> 00:00:48.240 They were more designed for what? System consumption. So when one system wants to 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:54.080 talk to another system, it makes sense to use things like JSON, XML, and YAML. 00:00:55.040 --> 00:00:59.680 And when you and I need to consume something from the device, it makes more sense to use the CLI. 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:07.360 But see, what's even better is for our systems to be able to talk to each other and consume 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:15.040 information using these formats, but for us to use a web-based interface, graphical user interface 00:01:15.040 --> 00:01:21.600 that can interpret this stuff and make it in a nice presentable format. So that's the idea here. 00:01:22.240 --> 00:01:26.400 So even though we might be using JSON, XML, or YAML between our devices, 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:30.240 when we want to see that information, it would be better that we had a web-based graphical 00:01:30.240 --> 00:01:37.680 user interface to see that or the CLI. So here are three, the three data formats. And what I 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:42.800 want you to just get away from this information here is that if you look at them, it's all the 00:01:42.880 --> 00:01:52.640 exact same information, just presented to you, displayed to you in a different way. That's all. 00:01:53.280 --> 00:01:59.440 So if you look at the JSON information versus the XML information versus the YAML information, 00:01:59.440 --> 00:02:05.280 just look at the final few entries, like EtherStats. Look at EtherStats right now. It's 00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:12.720 here. It's here. It's here. But it's just simply formatted in a different way. That's what we're 00:02:12.720 --> 00:02:18.800 talking about. This is all about formatting. Formatting. That's all these are, formats. 00:02:23.840 --> 00:02:27.200 So it's all the same information just displayed in different formats. So 00:02:27.200 --> 00:02:29.280 what do we want to know for the exam? It's JSON. 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:36.640 JavaScript object notation. Apparently, it's a human-readable data format for applications to 00:02:36.640 --> 00:02:41.360 store, transfer, and read data. Really? Human-readable? All right. It's better than XML. 00:02:43.040 --> 00:02:51.600 But for a newbie, a new person, a noob, that's not easy to read. You know what's easy to read to me? 00:02:51.600 --> 00:02:56.240 If this was presented to me in a web page as a graphical user interface, where all of this was 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:04.000 nicely presented in a chart form, hey, that would be good for me. Am I a JSON expert? Nope. 00:03:05.360 --> 00:03:09.360 Do I ever really want to be at this point in my life? The answer is no. 00:03:10.640 --> 00:03:14.720 But what I do need to know is how to read it. And that's what I'd like all of you to be able 00:03:14.720 --> 00:03:19.200 to do for the exam. Just read it. Understand what is going on. And if you can do that, 00:03:20.160 --> 00:03:22.880 you're going to do well on the certification exam. 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:28.720 So this is what I'd like to do. I'd like to just go into my live environment here 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:36.320 and pull this up, the same thing that we just had on the screen in this notepad file. 00:03:37.440 --> 00:03:42.320 Why? So I can draw on it. That's what I want to do. All right. Let's get over the top. 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:46.000 I've got to open the program so I can draw on it. 00:03:49.200 --> 00:03:53.680 All right. So here we go. 00:03:57.600 --> 00:04:01.840 So what do we need to learn here? We need to learn that first and foremost, 00:04:03.040 --> 00:04:05.760 you are going to have different 00:04:09.520 --> 00:04:14.960 characters in different positions. And if you can memorize 00:04:15.840 --> 00:04:20.800 where they typically go, what they're used for, you'll be able to answer the JSON questions on 00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:25.440 the exam. So first thing I want to point out to you is that we have a colon. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:37.120 And what are colons used for? Colons are used to separate what we call key value pairs. 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:44.880 So when we're dealing with JSON, we're dealing with key value pairs. So look at this example. 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:57.200 We have a key value pair. We have a key value pair. Now, if we go down a little bit further, 00:04:57.200 --> 00:05:01.280 this is where things can get a little bit confusing. But you'll notice here we have a key. 00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:08.640 Where is the value? Well, all of this is its value. 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:11.920 All of it is its value. 00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:26.720 So statistics, key, all of these are values. But then you have key values inside of that. 00:05:28.640 --> 00:05:30.400 You have key values inside of that. 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:36.480 So don't let that throw you off. It shows up like that on the exam. 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:54.480 So here, key statistic and value is all of this. Value is all of this. Value is all of this. But 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:58.720 key value, key value. So the values themselves are also key values 00:05:59.600 --> 00:06:08.960 because of the way it's being structured. But they're key values. Okay. So first was key values. 00:06:09.600 --> 00:06:15.440 And what's something else we want to point out here? Notice how you can have quotation marks. 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:22.080 Around what? Strings. So words, strings are going to have quotation marks. 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:32.880 In this case, that is a number. It's a number, an integer. So as a result of that, 00:06:32.880 --> 00:06:36.480 it's not going to have quotation marks. But then you might have a number. 00:06:37.440 --> 00:06:44.880 It's a number, an integer. So as a result of that, it's not going to have quotation marks. 00:06:44.880 --> 00:06:50.240 But then you might be saying, well, wait a second. Why does this number or this number not have 00:06:51.840 --> 00:06:54.880 quotation marks? Because that would be a string in this case. So even though it's a number, 00:06:55.520 --> 00:06:58.320 it's being represented as a string in this case. And that's okay. 00:06:58.320 --> 00:07:10.880 Okay. So quotation marks are fine. I like that. So you see quotation marks in a sample. 00:07:10.880 --> 00:07:17.920 That is JSON. You see key value pairs like that. That is JSON. All right. We have curly braces 00:07:20.240 --> 00:07:26.320 for opening and closing. So open. So therefore, there has to be one that closes somewhere else. 00:07:27.200 --> 00:07:30.240 Like here, you see this one opens. So there's got to be someone, 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:36.400 there's got to be another one that closes it somewhere else. And look, it opens again. 00:07:38.960 --> 00:07:42.560 And there's got to be one somewhere that closes that one. You can see it's right down here. 00:07:42.640 --> 00:07:46.160 It's right at the bottom, right in there. Right there. 00:07:56.080 --> 00:08:03.280 There it is. Now, what else do I want to point out to you? Let's point out commas. 00:08:04.080 --> 00:08:07.840 Commas. So commas are valid as well. 00:08:12.960 --> 00:08:19.680 So what I want you to notice is after every key value pair, we have a comma. You see that? 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:38.240 When do I not have a comma in the very last key value pair 00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:44.480 before the closing bracket? No comma there. 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:51.600 So there's a comma after every single key value pair until you get to the last key value pair 00:08:52.720 --> 00:09:00.880 before you close your bracket. So if we look at that, where's the comma? It's after the bracket 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:04.320 instead of after the key value pair. 00:09:05.200 --> 00:09:11.840 Key value, comma. Key value, comma. Key value, comma. Comma, comma. All right. Key, 00:09:12.400 --> 00:09:18.560 open bracket. Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma. Now I'm going to start singing. All right. No 00:09:18.560 --> 00:09:32.480 comma. It comes after the bracket. All right. So what do I want you to notice? 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:42.800 This is all that is required to know, folks. Can we have square brackets too? Yeah, 00:09:42.800 --> 00:09:54.480 we can also have square brackets. We can have square brackets for an array. An array. 00:09:54.480 --> 00:10:15.040 A-R-R-A-Y. Array. There you go. Small. Got large there for a second. 00:10:15.040 --> 00:10:26.240 Okay. So this is just something you're going to have to take some time to just memorize the 00:10:33.520 --> 00:10:36.720 I am frozen here, folks. I don't know if you are frozen. 00:10:36.720 --> 00:10:49.280 Let me refresh this. Can everyone hear me okay? Too many commas, I think. 00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:23.120 Yep. It looks like it's frozen. I'm not even getting. Okay, folks. 00:11:26.400 --> 00:11:27.760 I'm going to refresh stream. 00:11:27.760 --> 00:11:36.320 I will refresh stream. 00:11:57.760 --> 00:12:22.320 All right. It's resetting stream now. Okay. Looks like I'm connected. 00:12:27.760 --> 00:12:36.320 Okay. 00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:52.960 Still trying to verify everything on my end. 00:12:57.760 --> 00:13:10.320 Okay. Looking good now. I think we're good. Looks good for me. 00:13:15.440 --> 00:13:24.320 All right. I think we're good. Give everybody a couple more seconds. 00:13:28.080 --> 00:13:40.240 There we go. Yep. We are good to go. There we go. If you can't see me, refresh. 00:13:44.560 --> 00:13:54.080 All right, folks. All right. Where were we here? So the key for the exam is to take the time 00:13:55.040 --> 00:14:07.520 to know what is valid JSON syntax, meaning key values with a colon. If there's anything else 00:14:07.520 --> 00:14:16.080 between them, that's wrong. Curly braces at the start, curly braces at the end. If you open it, 00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:21.200 if you have to create what you see here, curly brace goes there. If they put any other type of 00:14:21.200 --> 00:14:26.400 bracket in that case, it's not right. You might see a square bracket and that would be okay 00:14:26.400 --> 00:14:29.200 because I'm going to show you momentarily where you could use that square bracket. 00:14:30.240 --> 00:14:36.480 Right. So that's fine. Quotations are good, but if they show you something else, but instead of 00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:41.920 quotations, they're using exclamation marks, right, or they're using apostrophes and different 00:14:41.920 --> 00:14:47.600 things like that. Okay. Those are wrong. Those are distractors, right? The goal here is to simply know 00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:52.240 what is valid versus not valid. So I have a secondary example here. 00:14:57.120 --> 00:15:04.880 And let's say I told you brand is Ford, name is Mustang, year is 2001. Attributes are black, 00:15:04.880 --> 00:15:11.600 five liter with a sunroof. How can we display this in JSON formatting? Well, open your bracket 00:15:12.560 --> 00:15:20.960 and then we have key value pairs, brand Ford, name Mustang, year 2020. Attributes, 00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:23.680 look at the square bracket there. So instead of curly, we're using square, 00:15:24.640 --> 00:15:30.880 black, five liter, sunroof. So why square instead of curly? Because notice we don't 00:15:30.880 --> 00:15:37.680 have key value pairs here. So if there were key value pairs here, then we would have curly 00:15:37.680 --> 00:15:42.240 brackets. But since we don't have key value pairs here, then we're just going to go ahead 00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:51.360 and have the square brackets. And then close it off. And notice no comma here at all. Oops, 00:15:51.360 --> 00:15:58.560 need my comma. There you go. My bad. Better save it. So there you go. You have your comment 00:15:58.560 --> 00:16:08.800 at the end. So not at the very last value. So key, and these are all your values. So now you 00:16:08.800 --> 00:16:15.200 put the comma at the end, right there, not there. All right. So and look at this, this exact same 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:24.800 thing can be written like this. There you go. So that means the same thing. And that's why 00:16:24.800 --> 00:16:28.000 when you first learn about this, if you're looking at it this way, it's like, well, why do 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:34.800 we do this? Because in reality, that's just this way. So you can understand it. But in reality, 00:16:36.080 --> 00:16:43.760 the devices see it like this. So open it up. Brand is for comma. So these go together. 00:16:44.640 --> 00:16:50.480 These go together. These go together. All of this goes together. 00:16:51.120 --> 00:17:00.320 Black, right? That's the idea behind it. So make sure you can pick out valid versus invalid. So, 00:17:00.880 --> 00:17:10.480 for example, if these commas were semicolons, wrong. If the colons were underscores, wrong. 00:17:11.360 --> 00:17:16.640 If these were square brackets, wrong, right? Pick the one that is accurate. 00:17:20.720 --> 00:17:27.360 Okay, so why no quotes around 2020? Because 2020 is not a string, it's an integer. So because I 00:17:27.360 --> 00:17:34.080 don't put quotes around it, it's an integer, it's a number. So like in this example here, 00:17:34.080 --> 00:17:39.840 it's a number, not a string. This would be a string. That's a string. Even though it's a number, 00:17:39.840 --> 00:17:44.320 it's represented as a string. This one's represented as a string. But this one's 00:17:44.320 --> 00:17:49.920 truly a number, truly a number, truly a number, truly a number, right? If there's no quotes, 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:56.400 if there's no quotes, it's truly an integer. And so when you're programming, like in Python, 00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:02.240 as an example, integers can be added together, subtracted, multiplied, divided. But if the 00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:06.640 number was a string, you can't do that. You'd have to convert the string to an integer to do 00:18:06.640 --> 00:18:12.640 your math and all that stuff. So this is truly 100% a number, where this is a number as a string. 00:18:13.280 --> 00:18:19.840 So it can't be treated as a number for mathematical calculations. That's why. 00:18:21.280 --> 00:18:25.200 So no quotes around 2020, because I want this to be a real number in this case. 00:18:25.760 --> 00:18:30.480 But if I had quotes around it, then it would be a string. That looks like a number. 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:37.680 All right, so that's JSON, JavaScript Object Notation. Our goal for the exam is to be able 00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:42.720 to do what? Identify the valid syntax. So they might present four different options for you and 00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:52.160 say which one's valid. Could be as easy as that. Could be as easy as that. All right, so now we 00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:57.680 have to consider the fact that if we're using JSON formatted data, and we are sending that over the 00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:03.920 internet, and how are we doing that, potentially? Oh, well, we'd be using HTTPS with REST API, 00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:10.400 so that's okay. But we also want to make sure that we protect our actual JSON data as well, 00:19:10.400 --> 00:19:16.080 the JSON information. So we have these things called JSON Web Tokens. JSON Web Tokens, 00:19:18.640 --> 00:19:27.360 also called JWTs, JWOT, is a compact, self-contained way to securely transmit 00:19:27.360 --> 00:19:34.160 information between parties as a JSON object. Sent through the URL, post parameter inside an 00:19:34.160 --> 00:19:40.640 HTTP header, and it contains all the needed information that is required in order to do what? 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:47.920 In order to validate the actual token and validate the information that is being transmitted. 00:19:48.800 --> 00:19:55.760 So I did a little sample here. I went to a website that could create a JSON Web Token for me, 00:19:56.400 --> 00:20:00.160 and so in this case here, I specified my algorithm and token type. 00:20:01.680 --> 00:20:07.440 I made some fake data, and so my fake data was just Encore exam example, 00:20:09.120 --> 00:20:14.960 and then I had to provide a signature. And so the signature using HMAC SHA-256, 00:20:15.520 --> 00:20:19.840 look what I wrote, and I said, I will pass Encore exam. So a little bit of subliminal messaging 00:20:19.840 --> 00:20:26.400 here. What I want to point out to you is that a JSON Web Token, taking the header information, 00:20:26.400 --> 00:20:33.280 your actual data itself that you're trying to protect, and then a signature, in this case, my 00:20:34.160 --> 00:20:39.040 passcode that I have, ultimately ends up creating this right here. 00:20:40.800 --> 00:20:48.000 This. So all of this is this now. And as a result of that, what do we have? This is the header. 00:20:50.320 --> 00:20:55.440 Followed by a period. Followed by what? Our payload. 00:20:57.920 --> 00:21:01.920 Followed by a period. Followed by the signature. 00:21:04.320 --> 00:21:08.560 Header, period, payload, period, signature. Repeat after me. 00:21:08.560 --> 00:21:14.240 Header, period, payload, period, signature. 00:21:19.840 --> 00:21:31.200 So we can use this now for authentication, authorization, and for the information exchange 00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:37.280 to protect our JSON data. Now, do we have something like this for other options like XML? Yes, 00:21:37.280 --> 00:21:41.840 we do. Okay, so I just want to show you this. This is not exam relevant when I'm about to show you, 00:21:41.840 --> 00:21:46.720 but just to show you how all of this information, I was able to produce this. 00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:51.040 If we were using XML, we would have to use something called SAML. 00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:57.840 SAML. And watch how big the SAML token becomes. 00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:13.040 And look, there's a scroll. Okay, that's massive. So JSON web tokens are way less verbose 00:22:13.440 --> 00:22:22.080 than XML. So the JSON web token ends up being smaller, and so it's a really great choice 00:22:23.120 --> 00:22:31.040 for use with HTML. And we can use public-private key pairs and X509 certificate signing as well 00:22:31.040 --> 00:22:41.040 with JWOTS. We have the HMAC algorithm, as we saw earlier, right here. So for the exam, 00:22:41.680 --> 00:22:46.000 you don't have to know how to create these. That's not the point of my demonstration here 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:50.960 of using this and showing it to you. The point is to realize that we have, you know, 00:22:50.960 --> 00:22:56.800 the ability to take that header, payload, signature, separate them by periods, 00:22:56.800 --> 00:23:03.200 and this is our encoded data, making it, giving us the ability to do the authentication, 00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:06.000 authorization, and safe information exchange that we want to. 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:08.000 Thank you for your attention.