What is BSON and how does it differ from JSON?

BSON, short for Binary JSON, is the binary format MongoDB uses to store documents and to send them over the network. It looks like JSON when you read it in the shell, but it is encoded as bytes and supports more types.

How it differs from JSON:

• JSON is text, while BSON is binary.
• BSON adds types that JSON lacks, such as ObjectId, Date and binary data.
• BSON is faster to parse and easier to traverse.
• BSON can take more space than the same JSON, because it stores extra metadata.

These values use BSON types that plain JSON cannot express.

{
  _id: ObjectId("507f1f77bcf86cd799439011"),
  created: ISODate("2023-01-01T12:00:00Z"),
  data: BinData(0, "SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ=")
}