What is the correct term for converting data between client side and server side format? What is the correct term for converting data between client side and server side format? json json

What is the correct term for converting data between client side and server side format?


There is no term for converting data to and from a client-side format to a server-side format, mainly because there doesn't exist such thing as server-side format and client-side format. Depending on the languages and code conventions used on both sides, data can live in very different formats and there is no server-side format that encompasses all server-side data formats, likewise for client-side data formats.

Case conversion is just a matter of code conventions in the server and client side. I've never encountered a term that encompasses the concept of case conversion specifically in the case of server-client communication.

So you'll have to invent your own term here. I'd suggest client-server data mapping.


I would call what you're doing mapping, since you're rearranging your data and renaming variables.

Serialization is the process of converting an object to a string or a "serial" format like binary, but you're doing more than that.


I'm not sure there's a single term for this. Snake case versus camel case usually involves programming constructs, not data manipulation, and is rarely a server versus client issue.

The only term that comes to mind is "canonicalization", which means converting data into a standard format. This is often done when allowing flexible formats of data coming from the client, but allowing all the modules that process it to be written to expect a more restricted format.

For instance, the back-end code might only understand camel case, but the UI or API allows both snake case and camel case. The main entrypoint would canonicalize everything to camel case.