Reference
Glossary
Short definitions of the formats, encodings and document concepts behind TheToolSera’s tools.
21 published terms
Browse A–Z
Every published term, grouped by first letter.
C
Character Encoding
Character encoding is the mapping between the characters people read and the bytes computers store, defining how text is turned into binary and back again.
Cron Expression
A cron expression is a compact string of time fields that tells a scheduler exactly when a recurring job should run.
CSV
CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a plain-text table format where each line is a row and each field is separated by a delimiter, usually a comma.
J
JSON
JSON is a lightweight text-based data format commonly used to exchange structured data between applications and APIs.
JSON Schema
JSON Schema is a declarative vocabulary, itself written in JSON, that describes the expected structure, types and constraints of a JSON document so it can be validated automatically.
JWT
A JSON Web Token (JWT) is a compact, signed token that carries JSON claims about a user or client so a server can verify identity without a database lookup.
P
PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format that preserves the exact layout, fonts and graphics of a document so it renders identically on any device.
PDF Compression
PDF compression reduces the file size of a PDF by re-encoding its images, removing redundant objects and compressing content streams, ideally without visible loss of quality.
U
URL Encoding
URL encoding, also called percent-encoding, replaces characters that have a special meaning or are unsafe in a URL with a percent sign followed by their hexadecimal byte value.
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-width Unicode encoding that represents every character in one to four bytes and is fully backwards compatible with ASCII.
UUID
A UUID is a 128-bit identifier, written as 36 hexadecimal characters, designed to be unique without any central coordination between the systems that generate it.
Browse by topic
Terms grouped by the concept they belong to.
How JSON, XML, YAML and CSV model and exchange structured data.
Encoding, patterns, identifiers and the fundamentals behind developer tooling.
Tokens, hashing and the concepts behind safe data handling.
PDFs, scanning, OCR and everything about document files.
Formats, compression and preparing images for the web.
Querying, structuring and reasoning about stored data.
Data Formats
API
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a defined contract that lets one piece of software request data or actions from another without knowing how it works internally.
CSV
CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a plain-text table format where each line is a row and each field is separated by a delimiter, usually a comma.
JSON
JSON is a lightweight text-based data format commonly used to exchange structured data between applications and APIs.
JSON Schema
JSON Schema is a declarative vocabulary, itself written in JSON, that describes the expected structure, types and constraints of a JSON document so it can be validated automatically.
XML
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a text format that describes data using nested, self-labelled tags, designed for documents and long-lived system-to-system messaging.
YAML
YAML is a whitespace-indented data format designed to be written and read by people, most often used for configuration files such as CI pipelines and Kubernetes manifests.
Developer
Base64
Base64 is an encoding scheme that represents binary data using 64 printable ASCII characters so it can travel safely through text-only channels.
Character Encoding
Character encoding is the mapping between the characters people read and the bytes computers store, defining how text is turned into binary and back again.
Cron Expression
A cron expression is a compact string of time fields that tells a scheduler exactly when a recurring job should run.
Minification
Minification removes every byte a machine does not need — whitespace, line breaks, comments and long names — from code or data without changing what it does.
Regex
A regular expression (regex) is a compact pattern language for finding, validating and replacing text that matches a described shape rather than a fixed string.
URL Encoding
URL encoding, also called percent-encoding, replaces characters that have a special meaning or are unsafe in a URL with a percent sign followed by their hexadecimal byte value.
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-width Unicode encoding that represents every character in one to four bytes and is fully backwards compatible with ASCII.
UUID
A UUID is a 128-bit identifier, written as 36 hexadecimal characters, designed to be unique without any central coordination between the systems that generate it.
Security
Hashing
Hashing converts data of any size into a fixed-length fingerprint using a one-way function, so the same input always produces the same output but the output cannot be reversed.
JWT
A JSON Web Token (JWT) is a compact, signed token that carries JSON claims about a user or client so a server can verify identity without a database lookup.
Documents
OCR
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) converts text inside images and scanned documents into real, selectable and searchable characters.
PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format that preserves the exact layout, fonts and graphics of a document so it renders identically on any device.
PDF Compression
PDF compression reduces the file size of a PDF by re-encoding its images, removing redundant objects and compressing content streams, ideally without visible loss of quality.