With the help of the POST, PUT or PATCH methods, data in any format (TXT, JSON, XML, PDF, JPEG, MP3, etc.) can be transmitted in the body. The transmission of the data is a sequence of bytes.
For the 'receiver', the MIME type is specified in the header as the "type/subtype" scheme.
The most important MIME types are listed in the table:
MIME type | Function/Application | Description |
|---|---|---|
text/plain | Text based/text editor. | The content consists only of simple text characters. |
text/html | Mark-up language/browser. | The content is written in the HTML mark-up language. |
application/json | C-based language/JavaScript. | The content is structured in the Java Script Object Notation (JSON) and can be created directly as an object by JavaScript. This is often used as the standard for REST. |
application/xml | Text based/text editor. | The content of the Extended Markup Language (XML) is based on text. |
application/soap+xml | XML-based message format/web service interaction. | A SOAP message is based on XML standards. A SOAP message consists of an envelope, which contains the body part with the actual user data and optionally a header part that contains meta information, such as routing information. |
application/octet-stream | Not recognised by server. | This is the default mode when there is no specific application. It is assumed that it is binary data. |
image/jpeg | Browser/picture viewer. | The content of a JPEG file (Joint Photographic Experts Group) represents binary data. |
application/vnd.ms-excel | Microsoft Excel data format. | The format xls(x) is often used in connection with CSV. |