Which encrypt value for request POST header when designing a RESTful API for an SPA application?
- application/x-www-form-urlencoded
- multipart/form-data
- text/plain
- application/json
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Jason Aller
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user2080105
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What motivates this choice and how that would help me over other choices ? – user2080105 Jan 16 '17 at 09:12
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All of them can be good choices, depending on your needs. JSON is probably a good default, but there is a place for others too. – Evert Aug 27 '20 at 04:03
2 Answers
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JSON yes, application/json ... not so much. If you just use application/json, your payloads aren't self-descriptive, after all - so you still have strong coupling between both endpoints. Thus, I would recommend to define JSON based media types for each type of message.
Julian Reschke
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clarified the response; the problem is that the media type "application/json" is completely generic thus not self-descriptive. Use a more specific one. – Julian Reschke Jan 16 '17 at 13:19
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- application/x-www-form-urlencoded
For application/x-www-form-urlencoded, the body of the HTTP message sent to the server is essentially one giant query string -- name/value pairs are separated by the ampersand (&), and names are separated from values by the equals symbol (=)
(application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data?)
- multipart/form-data
With this method of transmitting name/value pairs, each pair is represented as a "part" in a MIME message -For short alphanumeric values (like most web forms), the overhead of adding all of the MIME headers is going to significantly outweigh any savings from more efficient binary encoding
(application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data?)
- text/plain
This is "not reliably interpretable by computer", so it should never be used in production, and we will not look further into it.
(What does enctype='multipart/form-data' mean?)
- application/json In short, it is sort of a industry standard now. It provides a lot of advantages like flexibility and performance. As well as being universally understandable and descriptive. But read the post from Stephan C who is way more informed: Advantages of using application/json over text/plain?
