HTTP POST 请求中的自定义内容类型？

Question

I have a custom data format that I'm sending in an HTTP post body. I'm wondering if I should use text/plain or application/octet-stream , or if I could use a custom Content-Type ? Is making it custom in bad taste?

The format looks like this:

test0,id=28084 type=high,18765003 138456387

Answer 1

It's a good idea to use a custom mime type.

If the name of your product is 'sally', you might for example use:

application/prs.sally.testresults
application/vnd.sally.testresults
text/prs.sally.testresults
text/vnd.sally.testresults
application/x.sally.testresults
application/x.sally.testresults
text/x.sally.testresults
text/x.sally.testresults

The prs stands for 'personal', vnd stands for 'vendor', and x stands for unregistered.

You're officially required to register your prs or vnd mimetypes, but frankly very few do and it doesn't matter that much as long as you make an effort to make it reasonably unique.

The difference between application and text can be pretty subtle, because things like JSON and Javascript also use application .

Generally using application means intermediates like proxies will never try to automatically change things like character encoding, whereas text they might.

If something is more like a computer-interpreted format I would probably prefer application , and if it's more intended as human-readable text, then text is probably the right move.