NFON

NFON (eNFore Object Notation) is the standard internal data transport and exchange format of the enfore platform. As the CUWO Container is part of the enfore client, its APIs also use NFON to allow reuse of existing client frameworks.

NFON is an extension to JSON and thus any valid NFON must also be valid JSON. In pure JSON, objects are serialized as a list of key/value pairs enclosed in curly brackets. NFON adds a special key (@type) to all objects. The value of the @type key is a string containing the type name of the serialized type.

Pure JSON object: NFON object:
JSON object structure NFON object structure 
{
    "firstName": "John",
    "lastName": "Doe",
    "isMarried": false,
    "numberOfChildren": 3
}

{
    "@type": "n4.sample.Contact",
    "firstName": "John",
    "lastName": "Doe",
    "isMarried": false,
    "numberOfChildren": 3
}

This means that any valid NFON document is also a valid JSON document, but a valid JSON document is only considered valid NFON if any JSON object has an @type meta attribute that identifies its type on the enfore platform.