What is the correct JSON content type

Question

I ve been messing around with JSON for some time  just pushing it out as text and it hasn t hurt anybody  that I know of   but I d like to start doing things properly   I have seen so many purported  standards  for the JSON content type   application json application x-javascript text javascript text x-javascript text x-json   But which one is correct  or best  I gather that there are security and browser support issues varying between them   I know there s a similar question  What MIME type if JSON is being returned by a REST API   but I d like a slightly more targeted answer

User · Answer

As many others have mentioned  application json is the correct answer   But what haven t been explained yet is what the other options you proposed mean    application x-javascript  Experimental MIME type for JavaScript before application javascript was made standard  text javascript  Now obsolete  You should use application javascript when using javascript  text x-javascript  Experimental MIME type for the above situation  text x-json  Experimental MIME type for JSON before application json got officially registered    All in all  whenever you have any doubts about content types  you should check this link

User · Answer

For JSON  I am using    Content-Type  application json   This is described in the IETF s JSON Data Interchange Format 7158 proposal  Section 1 2  Specifications of JSON

User · Answer

The Content-Type header should be set to  application json  when posting  Server listening for the request should include  Accept application json   In Spring MVC you can do it like this    RequestMapping value  location   method   RequestMethod POST  headers    Accept application json     Add headers to the response   HttpHeaders headers   new HttpHeaders    headers add  Content-Type    application json

User · Answer

If you re calling ASP NET Web Services from the client-side you have to use application json for it to work  I believe this is the same for the jQuery and Ext frameworks

User · Answer

A part of your question is relevant to me as I just came across it  A third-party provider is providing a REST service that is used by multiple clients  It s a straight-forward REST called with query parameters that returns a well-formed JSON  I have tested it with PHP and Java where it worked as expected  My client uses Oracle Service Bus as a gateway between his application server and the Internet  When I made the OSB service  it crashed with an Invalid message format error  Turned out that the content-type being returned was text html  OSB treats responses as per this header  converting between text  XML and JSON  In this case  the response was JSON but the header didn t say so  Contacting the provider  I got the reply   quot We re not going to change it as it doesn t effect anyone else quot   The Content-Type header specifies what the content should be  not what it actually is  That is to say  in your consuming program  it s up to you to check or ignore it and process the content in any manner  Another example  you can return GIF data but specify the content type as JSON  then go ahead and ignore the header and read the image data  This won t hurt your program  but may hurt others  Moral of the story  Play nice

User · Answer

If you get data from REST API in JSON so you have to use content-type   For JSON data  Content-Type application json For HTML data  Content-Type text html  For XHTML data  Content-Type application xhtml xml  For XML data  Content-Type text xml  application xml

User · Answer

For JSON text  application json  The MIME media type for JSON text is application json  The default encoding is UTF-8   Source  RFC 4627    For JSONP  runnable JavaScript  with callback  application javascript Here are some blog posts that were mentioned in the relevant comments   Why you shouldn t use text html for JSON Internet  Explorer sometimes has issues with application json A rather complete list of Mimetypes and what to use them for The official mime type list at IANA from  gnrfan s answer below

User · Answer

To complement the rest of the answers  the MIME type for JSON linked data  JSON-LD  according to W3C is   application ld json Type name  application Subtype name  ld json  Additionally  from the same source   File extension s    jsonld

User · Answer

The right content type for JSON is application json UNLESS you re using JSONP  also known as JSON with Padding  which is actually JavaScript and so the right content type would be application javascript

User · Answer

In Spring you have a defined type  MediaType APPLICATION JSON VALUE which is equivalent to application json

User · Answer

Always try to remember these three content types even though there are many content types  as you may have to use these more frequently     Content-Type  application json  Content-Type  application xml  Content-Type  text html

User · Answer

Only when using application json as the MIME type I have the following  as of November 2011 with the most recent versions of Chrome  Firefox with Firebug     No more warnings from Chrome when the JSON is loaded from the server  Firebug will add a tab to the response showing you the JSON data formatted  If the MIME type is different  it will just show up as  Response content

User · Answer

In JSP  you can use this in page directive    lt    page language  java  contentType  application json  charset UTF-8      pageEncoding  UTF-8   gt    The correct MIME media type for JSON is application json   JSP will use it for sending a response to the client

User · Answer

Of course  the correct MIME media type for JSON is application json  but it s necessary to realize what type of data is expected in your application   For example  I use Ext GWT and the server response must go as text html but contains JSON data   Client side  Ext GWT form listener  uploadForm getForm   addListener new FormListenerAdapter          Override     public void onActionFailed Form form  int httpStatus  String responseText                 MessageBox alert  Error                Override     public void onActionComplete Form form  int httpStatus  String responseText                 MessageBox alert  Success                In case of using application json response type  the browser suggests me to save the file   Server side source code snippet using Spring MVC  return new AbstractUrlBasedView           SuppressWarnings  unchecked        Override     protected void renderMergedOutputModel Map model  HttpServletRequest request                                             HttpServletResponse response  throws Exception                response setContentType  text html            response getWriter   write json

User · Answer

For specifying the interesting JSON result  you add  application json  in your request header like below    Accept application json  is a desired response format    Content-Type application json  specifies the content format of your request  but sometimes you specify both application json and application xml  but the quality of these might be different  Which server will send back the different response formats  look at the example   Accept application json q 0 4 application xml q 8   This will return XML  because XML has higher quality

User · Answer

Not everything works for content type application json   If you are using Ext nbsp JS form submit to upload file  be aware that the server response is parsed by the browser to create the document for the  lt iframe gt    If the server is using JSON to send the return object  then the Content-Type header must be set to text html in order to tell the browser to insert the text unchanged into the document body   See the Ext JS 3 4 0 API documentation

User · Answer

Of course  the correct MIME media type for JSON is application json  but it s necessary to realize what type of data is expected in your application   For example  I use Ext GWT and the server response must go as text html but contains JSON data   Client side  Ext GWT form listener  uploadForm getForm   addListener new FormListenerAdapter          Override     public void onActionFailed Form form  int httpStatus  String responseText                 MessageBox alert  Error                Override     public void onActionComplete Form form  int httpStatus  String responseText                 MessageBox alert  Success                In case of using application json response type  the browser suggests me to save the file   Server side source code snippet using Spring MVC  return new AbstractUrlBasedView           SuppressWarnings  unchecked        Override     protected void renderMergedOutputModel Map model  HttpServletRequest request                                             HttpServletResponse response  throws Exception                response setContentType  text html            response getWriter   write json

User · Answer

If you are using Ubuntu or Debian and you serve  json files through Apache  you might want to serve the files with the correct content type  I am doing this primarily because I want to use the Firefox extension JSONView  The Apache module mod mime will help to do this easily  However  with Ubuntu you need to edit the file  etc mime types and add the line  application json json   Then restart Apache   sudo service apache2 restart

User · Answer

For JSON     Content-Type  application json   For JSON-P   Content-Type  application javascript

User · Answer

For JSON text  application json  The MIME media type for JSON text is application json  The default encoding is UTF-8   Source  RFC 4627    For JSONP  runnable JavaScript  with callback  application javascript Here are some blog posts that were mentioned in the relevant comments   Why you shouldn t use text html for JSON Internet  Explorer sometimes has issues with application json A rather complete list of Mimetypes and what to use them for The official mime type list at IANA from  gnrfan s answer below

User · Answer

PHP developers use this    lt  php     header  Content-type  application json            Do something here      gt

User · Answer

If the JSON is with padding then it will be application jsonp  If the JSON is without padding then it will be application json   To deal with both  it is a good practice to use   application javascript  without bothering whether it is with padding or without padding

User · Answer

To complement the rest of the answers  the MIME type for JSON linked data  JSON-LD  according to W3C is   application ld json Type name  application Subtype name  ld json  Additionally  from the same source   File extension s    jsonld

User · Answer

IANA has registered the official MIME Type for JSON as application json   When asked about why not text json  Crockford seems to have said JSON is not really JavaScript nor text and also IANA was more likely to hand out application   than text     More resources    Media Types Request for Comments 4627 bluesmoon  JSON has a type

User · Answer

The correct answer is   Content-Type  application json

User · Answer

As many others have mentioned  application json is the correct answer   But what haven t been explained yet is what the other options you proposed mean    application x-javascript  Experimental MIME type for JavaScript before application javascript was made standard  text javascript  Now obsolete  You should use application javascript when using javascript  text x-javascript  Experimental MIME type for the above situation  text x-json  Experimental MIME type for JSON before application json got officially registered    All in all  whenever you have any doubts about content types  you should check this link

User · Answer

The proper current standard is application json  While the default encoding is UTF-8  it is worth mentioning that it could also be UTF-16 or utf-32  When JSON is written in UTF-16 or UTF-32  binary content-transfer-encoding must be used   There is more information about json here  https   tools ietf org html rfc4627  more information on binary transfer encoding here  https   www w3 org Protocols rfc1341 5 Content-Transfer-Encoding html

User · Answer

A part of your question is relevant to me as I just came across it  A third-party provider is providing a REST service that is used by multiple clients  It s a straight-forward REST called with query parameters that returns a well-formed JSON  I have tested it with PHP and Java where it worked as expected  My client uses Oracle Service Bus as a gateway between his application server and the Internet  When I made the OSB service  it crashed with an Invalid message format error  Turned out that the content-type being returned was text html  OSB treats responses as per this header  converting between text  XML and JSON  In this case  the response was JSON but the header didn t say so  Contacting the provider  I got the reply   quot We re not going to change it as it doesn t effect anyone else quot   The Content-Type header specifies what the content should be  not what it actually is  That is to say  in your consuming program  it s up to you to check or ignore it and process the content in any manner  Another example  you can return GIF data but specify the content type as JSON  then go ahead and ignore the header and read the image data  This won t hurt your program  but may hurt others  Moral of the story  Play nice

User · Answer

Not everything works for content type application json   If you are using Ext nbsp JS form submit to upload file  be aware that the server response is parsed by the browser to create the document for the  lt iframe gt    If the server is using JSON to send the return object  then the Content-Type header must be set to text html in order to tell the browser to insert the text unchanged into the document body   See the Ext JS 3 4 0 API documentation

User · Answer

The right MIME type is application json  BUT  I experienced many situations where the browser type or the framework user needed   text html  application javascript

User · Answer

JSON  JavaScript Object Notation  and JSONP   JSON with padding   formats seems to be very similar and therefore it might be very confusing which MIME type they should be using  Even though the formats are similar  there are some subtle differences between them   So whenever in any doubts  I have a very simple approach  which works perfectly fine in most cases   namely  go and check corresponding RFC document   JSON RFC 4627  The application json Media Type for JavaScript Object Notation  JSON   is a specifications of JSON format  It says in section 6  that the MIME media type for JSON text is   application json    JSONP JSONP   JSON with padding   is handled different way than JSON  in a browser  JSONP is treated as a regular JavaScript script and therefore it should use application javascript  the current official MIME type for JavaScript  In many cases  however  text javascript MIME type will work fine too   Note that text javascript has been marked as obsolete by RFC 4329  Scripting Media Types  document and it is recommended to use application javascript type instead  However  due to legacy reasons  text javascript is still widely used and it has cross-browser support  which is not always a case with application javascript MIME type  especially with older browsers

User · Answer

If you get data from REST API in JSON so you have to use content-type   For JSON data  Content-Type application json For HTML data  Content-Type text html  For XHTML data  Content-Type application xhtml xml  For XML data  Content-Type text xml  application xml

User · Answer

If you re in a client-side environment  investigating about the cross-browser support is mandatory for a well supported web application   The right HTTP Content-Type would be application json  as others already highlighted too  but some clients do not handle it very well  that s why jQuery recommends the default text html

User · Answer

JSON   Response is dynamically generated data  according to the query parameters passed in the URL   Example      Name    Foo    Id   1234   Rank   7     Content-Type  application json    JSON-P   JSON with padding  Response is JSON data  with a function call wrapped around it   Example   functionCall   Name    Foo    Id   1234   Rank   7      Content-Type  application javascript

User · Answer

There is no doubt that application json is the best MIME type for a JSON response   But I had some experience where I had to use application x-javascript because of some compression issues  My hosting environment is shared hosting with GoDaddy  They do not allow me to change server configurations  I had added the following code to my web config file for compressing responses    lt httpCompression gt       lt scheme name  gzip  dll   Windir  system32 inetsrv gzip dll   gt       lt dynamicTypes gt           lt add mimeType  text    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  message    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  application javascript  enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType       enabled  false   gt       lt  dynamicTypes gt       lt staticTypes gt           lt add mimeType  text    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  message    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  application javascript  enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType       enabled  false   gt       lt  staticTypes gt   lt  httpCompression gt   lt urlCompression doStaticCompression  true  doDynamicCompression  true   gt    By using this  the  aspx pages was compressed with g-zip but JSON responses were not  I added   lt add mimeType  application json  enabled  true   gt    in the static and dynamic types sections  But this does not compress JSON responses at all   After that I removed this newly added type and added   lt add mimeType  application x-javascript  enabled  true   gt    in both the static and dynamic types sections  and changed the response type in   ashx  asynchronous handler  to  application x-javascript   And now I found that my JSON responses were compressed with g-zip  So I personally recommend to use  application x-javascript   only if you want to compress your JSON responses on a shared hosting environment  Because in shared hosting  they do not allow you to change IIS configurations

User · Answer

For JSON  I am using    Content-Type  application json   This is described in the IETF s JSON Data Interchange Format 7158 proposal  Section 1 2  Specifications of JSON

User · Answer

Only when using application json as the MIME type I have the following  as of November 2011 with the most recent versions of Chrome  Firefox with Firebug     No more warnings from Chrome when the JSON is loaded from the server  Firebug will add a tab to the response showing you the JSON data formatted  If the MIME type is different  it will just show up as  Response content

User · Answer

The proper current standard is application json  While the default encoding is UTF-8  it is worth mentioning that it could also be UTF-16 or utf-32  When JSON is written in UTF-16 or UTF-32  binary content-transfer-encoding must be used   There is more information about json here  https   tools ietf org html rfc4627  more information on binary transfer encoding here  https   www w3 org Protocols rfc1341 5 Content-Transfer-Encoding html

User · Answer

I use the below  contentType   application json   data  JSON stringify SendData

User · Answer

application json    is the correct JSON content type   def ajaxFindSystems       def result   Systems list     render contentType  application json         results         result each sys- gt          system id sys id  name sys name                    resultset  rows result size

User · Answer

JSON  JavaScript Object Notation  and JSONP   JSON with padding   formats seems to be very similar and therefore it might be very confusing which MIME type they should be using  Even though the formats are similar  there are some subtle differences between them   So whenever in any doubts  I have a very simple approach  which works perfectly fine in most cases   namely  go and check corresponding RFC document   JSON RFC 4627  The application json Media Type for JavaScript Object Notation  JSON   is a specifications of JSON format  It says in section 6  that the MIME media type for JSON text is   application json    JSONP JSONP   JSON with padding   is handled different way than JSON  in a browser  JSONP is treated as a regular JavaScript script and therefore it should use application javascript  the current official MIME type for JavaScript  In many cases  however  text javascript MIME type will work fine too   Note that text javascript has been marked as obsolete by RFC 4329  Scripting Media Types  document and it is recommended to use application javascript type instead  However  due to legacy reasons  text javascript is still widely used and it has cross-browser support  which is not always a case with application javascript MIME type  especially with older browsers

User · Answer

The Content-Type header should be set to  application json  when posting  Server listening for the request should include  Accept application json   In Spring MVC you can do it like this    RequestMapping value  location   method   RequestMethod POST  headers    Accept application json     Add headers to the response   HttpHeaders headers   new HttpHeaders    headers add  Content-Type    application json

User · Answer

If you re calling ASP NET Web Services from the client-side you have to use application json for it to work  I believe this is the same for the jQuery and Ext frameworks

User · Answer

For JSON text  application json  The MIME media type for JSON text is application json  The default encoding is UTF-8   Source  RFC 4627    For JSONP  runnable JavaScript  with callback  application javascript Here are some blog posts that were mentioned in the relevant comments   Why you shouldn t use text html for JSON Internet  Explorer sometimes has issues with application json A rather complete list of Mimetypes and what to use them for The official mime type list at IANA from  gnrfan s answer below

User · Answer

JSON is a domain-specific language  DSL  and a data format independent of JavaScript  and as such has its own MIME type  application json  Respect for MIME types is of course client driven  so text plain may do for transfer of bytes  but then you would be pushing up interpretation to the vendor application domain unnecessarily - application json  Would you transfer XML via text plain   But honestly  your choice of MIME type is advice to the client as to how to interpret the data- text plain or text HTML  when it s not HTML  is like type erasure- it s as uninformative as making all your objects of type Object in a typed language   No browser runtime I know of will take a JSON document and automatically make it available to the runtime as a JavaScript accessible object without intervention  but if you are working with a crippled client  that s an entirely different matter  But that s not the whole story- RESTful JSON services often don t have JavaScript runtimes  but it doesn t stop them using JSON as a viable data interchange format  If clients are that crippled    then I would consider perhaps HTML injection via an Ajax templating service instead   Application JSON

User · Answer

IANA has registered the official MIME Type for JSON as application json   When asked about why not text json  Crockford seems to have said JSON is not really JavaScript nor text and also IANA was more likely to hand out application   than text     More resources    Media Types Request for Comments 4627 bluesmoon  JSON has a type

User · Answer

In JSP  you can use this in page directive    lt    page language  java  contentType  application json  charset UTF-8      pageEncoding  UTF-8   gt    The correct MIME media type for JSON is application json   JSP will use it for sending a response to the client

User · Answer

I use the below  contentType   application json   data  JSON stringify SendData

User · Answer

Content-Type  application json - json Content-Type  application javascript - json-P Content-Type  application x-javascript - javascript Content-Type  text javascript - javascript BUT obsolete  older IE versions used to use as html attribute  Content-Type  text x-javascript - JavaScript Media Types BUT obsolete Content-Type  text x-json - json before application json got officially registered

User · Answer

There is no doubt that application json is the best MIME type for a JSON response   But I had some experience where I had to use application x-javascript because of some compression issues  My hosting environment is shared hosting with GoDaddy  They do not allow me to change server configurations  I had added the following code to my web config file for compressing responses    lt httpCompression gt       lt scheme name  gzip  dll   Windir  system32 inetsrv gzip dll   gt       lt dynamicTypes gt           lt add mimeType  text    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  message    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  application javascript  enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType       enabled  false   gt       lt  dynamicTypes gt       lt staticTypes gt           lt add mimeType  text    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  message    enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType  application javascript  enabled  true   gt           lt add mimeType       enabled  false   gt       lt  staticTypes gt   lt  httpCompression gt   lt urlCompression doStaticCompression  true  doDynamicCompression  true   gt    By using this  the  aspx pages was compressed with g-zip but JSON responses were not  I added   lt add mimeType  application json  enabled  true   gt    in the static and dynamic types sections  But this does not compress JSON responses at all   After that I removed this newly added type and added   lt add mimeType  application x-javascript  enabled  true   gt    in both the static and dynamic types sections  and changed the response type in   ashx  asynchronous handler  to  application x-javascript   And now I found that my JSON responses were compressed with g-zip  So I personally recommend to use  application x-javascript   only if you want to compress your JSON responses on a shared hosting environment  Because in shared hosting  they do not allow you to change IIS configurations

User · Answer

The right content type for JSON is application json UNLESS you re using JSONP  also known as JSON with Padding  which is actually JavaScript and so the right content type would be application javascript

User · Answer

If you re in a client-side environment  investigating about the cross-browser support is mandatory for a well supported web application   The right HTTP Content-Type would be application json  as others already highlighted too  but some clients do not handle it very well  that s why jQuery recommends the default text html

User · Answer

The correct answer is   Content-Type  application json

User · Answer

If the JSON is with padding then it will be application jsonp  If the JSON is without padding then it will be application json   To deal with both  it is a good practice to use   application javascript  without bothering whether it is with padding or without padding

User · Answer

Always try to remember these three content types even though there are many content types  as you may have to use these more frequently     Content-Type  application json  Content-Type  application xml  Content-Type  text html

User · Answer

In Spring you have a defined type  MediaType APPLICATION JSON VALUE which is equivalent to application json

User · Answer

JSON is a domain-specific language  DSL  and a data format independent of JavaScript  and as such has its own MIME type  application json  Respect for MIME types is of course client driven  so text plain may do for transfer of bytes  but then you would be pushing up interpretation to the vendor application domain unnecessarily - application json  Would you transfer XML via text plain   But honestly  your choice of MIME type is advice to the client as to how to interpret the data- text plain or text HTML  when it s not HTML  is like type erasure- it s as uninformative as making all your objects of type Object in a typed language   No browser runtime I know of will take a JSON document and automatically make it available to the runtime as a JavaScript accessible object without intervention  but if you are working with a crippled client  that s an entirely different matter  But that s not the whole story- RESTful JSON services often don t have JavaScript runtimes  but it doesn t stop them using JSON as a viable data interchange format  If clients are that crippled    then I would consider perhaps HTML injection via an Ajax templating service instead   Application JSON

User · Answer

PHP developers use this    lt  php     header  Content-type  application json            Do something here      gt

User · Answer

The application json works great in PHP to store an array or object   data    I use this code to put data in JSON on Google Cloud Storage  GCS  which is set publically viewable    context   stream context create        gs    gt             acl   gt  public-read             Content-Type    gt   application json              file put contents       gs   BUCKETNAME FILENAME json        json encode  object   array        false        context      To get back the data is straight forward    data   json decode file get contents  gs   BUCKETNAME FILENAME json

User · Answer

JSON   Response is dynamically generated data  according to the query parameters passed in the URL   Example      Name    Foo    Id   1234   Rank   7     Content-Type  application json    JSON-P   JSON with padding  Response is JSON data  with a function call wrapped around it   Example   functionCall   Name    Foo    Id   1234   Rank   7      Content-Type  application javascript

User · Answer

For JSON text  application json  The MIME media type for JSON text is application json  The default encoding is UTF-8   Source  RFC 4627    For JSONP  runnable JavaScript  with callback  application javascript Here are some blog posts that were mentioned in the relevant comments   Why you shouldn t use text html for JSON Internet  Explorer sometimes has issues with application json A rather complete list of Mimetypes and what to use them for The official mime type list at IANA from  gnrfan s answer below

User · Answer

The right MIME type is application json  BUT  I experienced many situations where the browser type or the framework user needed   text html  application javascript

User · Answer

If you re calling ASP NET Web Services from the client-side you have to use application json for it to work  I believe this is the same for the jQuery and Ext frameworks

User · Answer

As some research  Most commonly MIME type is application json Let s see a example to differentiate with json  and javascript   application json  It is used when it is not known how this data will be used  When the information is to be just extracted from the server in JSON format  it may be through a link or from any file  in that case  it is used  For example-  lt  php     header  Content-type application json                directory                Id   gt  1   Name    gt   this                 Id   gt  2   Name    gt   is                Id   gt  3   Name    gt   stackoverflow                                 Showing the json data   echo json encode  directory               gt   Output is     quot Id quot  1   quot Name quot   quot this quot      quot Id quot  2   quot Name quot   quot is quot      quot Id quot  3   quot Name quot   quot stackoverflow quot       application javascript  it is used when the use of the data is predefined  It is used by applications in which there are calls by the client-side ajax applications  It is used when the data is of type JSON-P or JSONP    For example  lt  php   header  Content-type application javascript       dir                Id   gt  1   Name    gt   this                 Id   gt  2   Name    gt   is                Id   gt  3   Name    gt   stackoverflow                       echo  quot Function call  quot  json encode  dir   quot    quot             gt    Output is  Function call    quot Id quot  1   quot Name quot   quot this quot      quot Id quot  2   quot Name quot   quot is quot      quot Id quot  3   quot Name quot   quot stackoverflow quot      And for other MIME Types see full detail here  https   developer mozilla org en-US docs Web HTTP Basics of HTTP MIME types

User · Answer

Extending the accepted responses  when you are using JSON in a REST context     There is a strong argument about using application x-resource json and application x-collection json when you are representing REST resources and collections   And if you decide to follow the jsonapi specification  you should use of application vnd api json  as it is documented   Altough there is not an universal standard  it is clear that the added semantic to the resources being transfered justify a more explicit Content-Type than just application json   Following this reasoning  other contexts could justify a more specific Content-Type

User · Answer

For specifying the interesting JSON result  you add  application json  in your request header like below    Accept application json  is a desired response format    Content-Type application json  specifies the content format of your request  but sometimes you specify both application json and application xml  but the quality of these might be different  Which server will send back the different response formats  look at the example   Accept application json q 0 4 application xml q 8   This will return XML  because XML has higher quality

User · Answer

The IANA registration for application json says     Applications that use this media type   JSON has been used to      exchange data between applications written in all of these      programming languages  ActionScript  C  C   Clojure  ColdFusion       Common Lisp  E  Erlang  Go  Java  JavaScript  Lua  Objective CAML       Perl  PHP  Python  Rebol  Ruby  Scala  and Scheme    You ll notice that IANA org doesn t list any of these other media types  in fact even application javascript is now obsolete  So application json is really the only possible correct answer    Browser support is another thing    The most widely supported non-standard media types are text json or text javascript  But some big names even use text plain    Even more strange is the Content-Type header sent by Flickr  who returns JSON as text xml  Google uses text javascript for some of it s ajax apis   Examples   curl -I  https   ajax googleapis com ajax services search video v 1 0 amp q jsonexample    Output  Content-Type  text javascript  curl -I  https   www flickr com services rest  method flickr test echo amp format json amp api key f82254c1491d894f1204d8408f645a93    Output  Content-Type  text xml

User · Answer

The IANA registration for application json says     Applications that use this media type   JSON has been used to      exchange data between applications written in all of these      programming languages  ActionScript  C  C   Clojure  ColdFusion       Common Lisp  E  Erlang  Go  Java  JavaScript  Lua  Objective CAML       Perl  PHP  Python  Rebol  Ruby  Scala  and Scheme    You ll notice that IANA org doesn t list any of these other media types  in fact even application javascript is now obsolete  So application json is really the only possible correct answer    Browser support is another thing    The most widely supported non-standard media types are text json or text javascript  But some big names even use text plain    Even more strange is the Content-Type header sent by Flickr  who returns JSON as text xml  Google uses text javascript for some of it s ajax apis   Examples   curl -I  https   ajax googleapis com ajax services search video v 1 0 amp q jsonexample    Output  Content-Type  text javascript  curl -I  https   www flickr com services rest  method flickr test echo amp format json amp api key f82254c1491d894f1204d8408f645a93    Output  Content-Type  text xml

User · Answer

If you are using Ubuntu or Debian and you serve  json files through Apache  you might want to serve the files with the correct content type  I am doing this primarily because I want to use the Firefox extension JSONView  The Apache module mod mime will help to do this easily  However  with Ubuntu you need to edit the file  etc mime types and add the line  application json json   Then restart Apache   sudo service apache2 restart

User · Answer

The application json works great in PHP to store an array or object   data    I use this code to put data in JSON on Google Cloud Storage  GCS  which is set publically viewable    context   stream context create        gs    gt             acl   gt  public-read             Content-Type    gt   application json              file put contents       gs   BUCKETNAME FILENAME json        json encode  object   array        false        context      To get back the data is straight forward    data   json decode file get contents  gs   BUCKETNAME FILENAME json

User · Answer

application json    is the correct JSON content type   def ajaxFindSystems       def result   Systems list     render contentType  application json         results         result each sys- gt          system id sys id  name sys name                    resultset  rows result size

User · Answer

As some research  Most commonly MIME type is application json Let s see a example to differentiate with json  and javascript   application json  It is used when it is not known how this data will be used  When the information is to be just extracted from the server in JSON format  it may be through a link or from any file  in that case  it is used  For example-  lt  php     header  Content-type application json                directory                Id   gt  1   Name    gt   this                 Id   gt  2   Name    gt   is                Id   gt  3   Name    gt   stackoverflow                                 Showing the json data   echo json encode  directory               gt   Output is     quot Id quot  1   quot Name quot   quot this quot      quot Id quot  2   quot Name quot   quot is quot      quot Id quot  3   quot Name quot   quot stackoverflow quot       application javascript  it is used when the use of the data is predefined  It is used by applications in which there are calls by the client-side ajax applications  It is used when the data is of type JSON-P or JSONP    For example  lt  php   header  Content-type application javascript       dir                Id   gt  1   Name    gt   this                 Id   gt  2   Name    gt   is                Id   gt  3   Name    gt   stackoverflow                       echo  quot Function call  quot  json encode  dir   quot    quot             gt    Output is  Function call    quot Id quot  1   quot Name quot   quot this quot      quot Id quot  2   quot Name quot   quot is quot      quot Id quot  3   quot Name quot   quot stackoverflow quot      And for other MIME Types see full detail here  https   developer mozilla org en-US docs Web HTTP Basics of HTTP MIME types

User · Answer

For JSON     Content-Type  application json   For JSON-P   Content-Type  application javascript

User · Answer

If you re calling ASP NET Web Services from the client-side you have to use application json for it to work  I believe this is the same for the jQuery and Ext frameworks

User · Answer

Extending the accepted responses  when you are using JSON in a REST context     There is a strong argument about using application x-resource json and application x-collection json when you are representing REST resources and collections   And if you decide to follow the jsonapi specification  you should use of application vnd api json  as it is documented   Altough there is not an universal standard  it is clear that the added semantic to the resources being transfered justify a more explicit Content-Type than just application json   Following this reasoning  other contexts could justify a more specific Content-Type

User · Answer

Content-Type  application json - json Content-Type  application javascript - json-P Content-Type  application x-javascript - javascript Content-Type  text javascript - javascript BUT obsolete  older IE versions used to use as html attribute  Content-Type  text x-javascript - JavaScript Media Types BUT obsolete Content-Type  text x-json - json before application json got officially registered

[json] What is the correct JSON content type?

Examples related to json

Examples related to http-headers

Examples related to content-type