doc: JSON-RPC request Content-Type is application/json #30215

1. 
   fanquake commented at 3:52 PM on May 31, 2024: member

   Specify json content type in RPC examples.

   Picks up #29946. Which needed rebasing and the commit message fixing,

2. doc: JSON-RPC request Content-Type is application/json

   Specify json content type in RPC examples

   3c08e11c3e
3. fanquake requested review from laanwj on May 31, 2024
4. fanquake requested review from ryanofsky on May 31, 2024
5. 
   DrahtBot commented at 3:52 PM on May 31, 2024: contributor

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6. DrahtBot added the label Docs on May 31, 2024
7. tdb3 approved
8. 
   tdb3 commented at 1:01 PM on June 1, 2024: contributor

   ACK for 3c08e11c3ea4499e8d20609e2417cac859b3e98e

   This is a reasonable change, which over time can help nudge implementations to usage of the more appropriate content-type application/json.

   Spec tracing

   I didn't see mention of content-type or linked RFC in the JSON-RPC v1 spec (https://www.jsonrpc.org/specification_v1), but the JSON-RPC 2.0 spec does reference RFC 4627 (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt), which specifies (in section 6) the type/subtype of application/json. RFC 4627 is obsoleted by 7159, which in turn is obsoleted by 8259, but the result is the same (section 12 of 8259 specifies usage of application/json).

   nit: Technically, I think the trailing semicolon application/json; may be unnecessary, since there are no parameters specified with the content-type. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2616#section-14.17, https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2616#section-3.7

   Content-Type   = "Content-Type" ":" media-type
   

   media-type     = type "/" subtype *( ";" parameter )
   

   Other notes

   While JSON-RPC 2.0 support was recently added (with backwards compatibility for pre-2.0) and the examples continue to specify "jsonrpc": "1.0", I think it's appropriate that this PR is scoped to updating just the content-type. Updating examples to use "jsonrpc": "2.0" would be best left to a later PR.

   Sanity checking performed: viewed JSON-RPC-interface.md rendered in-browser, built and ran unit and functional tests (all passed, including rpc_tests), ran bitcoin-cli without the trailing semicolon to see how bitcoind would handle it (successful).

9. 
   laanwj commented at 11:04 AM on June 3, 2024: member

   ACK 3c08e11c3ea4499e8d20609e2417cac859b3e98e This is an obvious documentation improvement.

   nit: Technically, I think the trailing semicolon application/json;

   Good catch. Content type doesn't need to be suffixed with ;. It's pretty uncommon, even. According to the curl doc the semicolon is a special syntax for providing an empty header, but not required otherwise, eg the example they give is:

   curl -H "X-First-Name: Joe" http://example.com/
   

   Also,

   JSON text SHALL be encoded in Unicode. The default encoding is UTF-8.

   So it's never necessary to provide say Content-type: application/json; charset=utf-8.

10. fanquake merged this on Jun 3, 2024
11. fanquake closed this on Jun 3, 2024

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12. fanquake deleted the branch on Jun 3, 2024
13. anointedboss1717 approved
14. 
    anointedboss1717 commented at 9:16 PM on June 20, 2024: none

    29947

15. bitcoin locked this on Jun 20, 2025

Review Requested
laanwjryanofsky