These are some simple visuals I quickly threw together. I hope they will help to improve conversations which will lead to better-informed decisions. In IT we have a habit of using lots of names for exactly the same thing, which frequently leads to longer and more confusing conversations! I hope the visual breakdown of URLs and JSON objects into their constituent parts will be of benefit to newbies and non-techies alike.

JSON Example

• Object/JSON object – they start with { and end with }
• Property or Key/Value pair – a combination of keys and values
• Key – this is always a String. It is used to identify and retrieve the associated value
• Value – this can either a
  • String
  • Number
  • Object
  • Array
• Payload/Body/Request/Response body – everything listed above is contained in payload/body

URL Example

Below is an example of a URL broken down into its’ smallest elements. I have also listed some of the common names people use to refer to specific parts of a URL.

I couldn’t fit “URL fragment” into the above example so I included it below

• Protocol
  • below are some other popular protocols
    • SSH
    • TCP
    • HTTP
• Subdomain
  • As you will probably have figured out by now “www” is also just a another subdomain. Google cleverly use subdomains to organise their different products into easy to remember URLs
    •  mail.google.com
    • play.google.com
    • music.google.com
• Domain
  • Everyone should be very familiar with this concept but you may not have been aware of it’s precise name. Sometimes people use this term interchangeably with Host or Hostname
• TLD (Top Level Domain)
  • it’s not very often you will need to refer to this but I’ve included it for completeness
• Host/Hostname
  • same comment as I wrote for “Domain” above
• Path
  • this is just the folder structure of the application/service. It’s the path the application/service takes to navigates to the correct resource (usually a HTML, CSS, Javascript, JSON or image file)
• Query string/query parameter/parameter(s)
  • this is how you can pass additional values to your service. It’s pretty common for GET requests 
• URL Fragment
  • this is commonly used to anchor to a particular part/section of a webpage
•  URL/Endpoint
  • “URL” is generally used when referring to a websites
  • “Endpoint” is usually used when talking about services