deangrant Content Negotiation and Media Types
Use this skill when clients and servers must agree on representation format.
1. Negotiation
Client sends preferences (Accept, Accept-Encoding, Accept-Language with
optional q). Server picks a representation and declares Content-Type.
Always set Content-Type on bodies (include charset for text).
2. Failures
| Case | Status |
|---|---|
Unsatisfiable Accept |
406 |
| Unsupported request body type | 415 |
Do not silently fall back unless documented. Document default when Accept is
absent (often JSON).
3. Caching
When multiple representations share a URI: Vary: Accept, Accept-Encoding.
Keep the supported format set small to limit cache-key cardinality.
Errors: application/problem+json.
4. Quick checklist
- Document request Content-Types and Accept policy.
- Always set response Content-Type.
- 406 / 415 used correctly.
- Vary when multi-representation.
- Declared in OpenAPI.
See reference.md and examples.md.