Media Types Registry
Content types used in ACDP transport bindings.
| Media type | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|
application/acdp+json | Stable | Canonical JSON encoding of ACDP messages (HTTP transport). All ACDP endpoints accept and emit this type. Protocol version is carried in JSON (acdp_version in capabilities, optional body.acdp_version in bodies — RFC-ACDP-0001 §6); the media type itself does NOT carry a version parameter. Implementations MAY include ; charset=utf-8 per RFC 8259. |
application/acdp-context+json | Provisional | A bare body or full {body, registry_state} payload, used in caching headers and inline payloads. Same versioning rules as application/acdp+json — version lives in JSON, not in a media-type parameter. |
ACDP v0.1.0 is JSON-only. Binary transport bindings are out of scope for this version; if added in a future version, additional media types will be registered here.
Content negotiation
When negotiating content types, clients SHOULD send:
Accept: application/acdp+jsonServers SHOULD honor the preference where supported. The default if no Accept header is supplied is application/acdp+json.
Versioning
Protocol version is carried in JSON, not in the Content-Type header. The authoritative version sources are acdp_version on the capabilities document (RFC-ACDP-0007 §3) and the optional body.acdp_version on a context body (RFC-ACDP-0001 §6). The media type does NOT carry a version parameter; doing so would create two competing version sources and is forbidden.
Registration status
application/acdp+json is requested for IANA registration in RFC-ACDP-0001 §11.2. Until accepted, implementations SHOULD use this media type and accept application/json as a fallback for legacy clients.