Resource representation

Resource representation defines the data format of the response. The response message may be in any one of the following formats:

• Plain text
• Form-encoding
• XML
• HTML
• JSON
• Any other Internet media type, provided that it is a valid hypertext standard

You can specify the format of the delivery content by setting the Content-Type header value in the request headers to the service. REST APIs commonly use either the application/json or application/xml media type.

Here is an example of a header request for JSON:

Content-Type: application/json
Host: localhost:65437
Content-Length: 69

Now, we'll see an example for XML:

Content-Type: application/xml
Host: localhost:65437
Content-Length: 69

Tip

Remember to use XML to transfer documents and JSON for data transfers.