Does JSON have a + json suffix convention?

Question

XML has a convention that non-standard XML-based mime types take the suffix '+ xml' (useful for syntax highlighting, etc.). This is described by RFC3023 .

I looked at RFC4626 , but I can not find mention of something like this for JSON. Does JSON have a similar convention? Is it documented somewhere?

Answer 1

Yes, the suffix + json is described in the following RFC: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6839

Answer 2

There are various types of media in XML. Some of them:

• XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) application/xhtml+xml
• SVG (scalable vector graphics) image/svg+xml
• RSS (really simple syndication) application/rss+xml

Each MIME type identifies a different language.

RFC 3023 standardizes the convention on the use of the suffix + xml, as you correctly pointed out.

Paraphrased from a wikipedia article - XML and MIME .

Update: Fixed the incorrect assumption that JSON is not used as an alternative representation for XML.

There are alternative MIME types with the widely used suffix +json . And, as rightly noted, they will continue to grow, given JSON.

The +json suffix convention is non-standard, but used by others.

Answer 3

There is an ongoing specification process "application/" subtype "+json" in the JSON media type for describing the structure and meaning of JSON documents in a draft of this status record. Additional resources are available at http://json-schema.org/ .

Answer 4

The GitHub API uses custom mime JSON types.

http://developer.github.com/v3/media/

You can accept their agreement.

I do not think this has been documented in the same way as with the custom XML theme. I think this is useful and that this should be documented. In the meantime, you can use them and understand that some tools do not recognize the mime type as JSON.

Answer 5

I saw that such an agreement is used, yes. This is not what JSON (specification) should indicate, although perhaps later versions may offer recommendations. Most likely, it will be defined as a separate RFC.

You might want to ask this question on a mailing list such as restful-json , where there are more experts who could give a more complete answer.