What is the correct JSON content type?

json http-headers content-type
Oli picture Oli · Jan 25, 2009 · Viewed 3M times · Source

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.

Answer

Gumbo picture Gumbo · Jan 25, 2009

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:

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