Parsing is the critical step that allows an application to read and work with data received in JSON format. Every major programming language has a built-in function or library for this. In JavaScript, you use JSON.parse(). In Python, you use json.loads().
If the string being parsed is not valid JSON (e.g., it has a syntax error), the parsing process will fail and typically throw an error, which must be handled by the application.
JavaScript Example
const jsonString = '{"name": "Alice", "age": 28}';
const userObject = JSON.parse(jsonString);
console.log(userObject.name); // Output: Alice