JSON should not be sent as text/html

[gsnedders]

Currently we serve everything by text/html;charset=utf-8 by default — including JSON. We should instead use application/json;charset=utf-8.

[gsnedders]

And this, in one simple patch, should fix it.

[michaeltwofish]

I claim no expertise about this, but this article seems germane,  http://simonwillison.net/2009/Feb/6/json/. Basically, many browsers don't handle application/json, and a more reliable solution seems to be to send application/javascript where appropriate.

[michaeltwofish]

However, Anne van Kesteren, who has some knowledge in the area, says in the comments,0

"Browsers ignore the Content-Type when loading through <script> ... so whether you use application/json, application/javascript, application/x-javascript, text/plain, text/html, or nothing at all does not really matter."

So this isn't worth the effort ?

[gsnedders]

Yeah, Anne wrote the spec (he's annevk on Freenode, FWIW), and spent way too much time reverse-engineering stuff, so he does have some knowledge. :)

Basically the point is when using window.XMLHttpRequest (or XHR as an ActiveX object) the Content-Type is ignored, so it is true that this bug causes no issues, even if it is against spec. (the only effect of using text/html is that the browser tries to get the character encoding as if it were HTML, though in our case that means it just uses the charset parameter on the Content-Type header). It also means that fixing it causes no issues.

[moeffju]

In [3346], thanks.

[sean]

Reopened by [3412]

[sean]

... and closing as won't fix.

[gsnedders]

Is there really no way to fix this? Does even text/javascript cause issues anywhere?

[gsnedders]

And fixed in [3506].