Multiple formats are supported for the client request payloads and the server responses: JSON, YAML, x-www-form-urlencoded, Hjson, JSON5, INI and raw.

To specify which format to use in both the client request payload (if any is present) and the server response, use the query variable ?format=FORMAT in the request URL, where FORMAT is json, yaml, urlencoded, hjson, json5, ini or raw.

Most of the examples in this documentation use JSON for the the client request payloads and the server responses.

Charsets

Multiple character sets are supported in the client request payload (if any is present). The response is always in UTF-8.

To specify which one to use, set the query variable ?charset=CHARSET in the request URL.

See here for a full list of supported charsets. Common ones include utf-8, utf-16, ascii, binary, base64 and hex.

By default, no charset decoding is performed.

HTTP headers

HTTP can also use the standard headers Accept and Content-Type instead of the format and charset query variables.

JSON

This is the default format.

{
  "limits": {
    "pagesize": 10
  },
  "protocols": {
    "http": {
      "hostname": "myhostname"
    }
  }
}

YAML

Only JSON-compatible YAML is allowed. In particular the types !!set, !!map, !!omap, !!pairs, !!seq, !!binary, undefined, regexp and function are not allowed.

# Comment

limits:
  pagesize: 10
protocols:
  http:
    hostname: myhostname

x-www-form-urlencoded

This is the format used in JavaScript's FormData or by default in HTML's <form>.

limits.pagesize=10&protocols.http.hostname=myhostname

Hjson

Superset of JSON.

// Comment

{
  limits: {
    pagesize: 10
  }
  protocols: {
    http: {
      hostname: myhostname
    }
  }
}

JSON5

Superset of JSON.

// Comment

{
  limits: {
    pagesize: 10
  },
  protocols: {
    http: {
      hostname: 'myhostname'
    }
  }
}

INI

# Comment

[limits]

pagesize=10

[protocols.http]

hostname=myhostname

Raw

Any format that does not require specific parsing, including images, videos, unstructured text files and binary files.

The server response will be using the default format, i.e. JSON.