Question

I am developing a new REST-full webservice for our application,I wanted to send the reqest data in requestHeader instead of sending as query param, as my request data is large.

I have My jquery code like below to add json to the request header and call the REST service GET method.

$.ajax({  
beforeSend: function(req) {  
req.setRequestHeader("test", "{name:mouli, id:918}");},  
type : "GET",  
data :'',  
dataType : "jsonp",  
url : 'http://localhost:29801/RestFulJSONExample/rest/jobdesc?callback=?',  
success : function(data) {  
alert("invoked");  
}  
});  
});  

And my GET method in my REST service is like

@GET  
@Produces("application/javascript")  
public JSONWithPadding getJobDescription(@Context HttpHeaders headers) {  
    List<String> requestHeader = headers.getRequestHeader("test");  
//some logic here.  
}  

i could able to get the JSON object from the request header which i have added in the jquery request.

My question is ..
Can i follow this approach? is it secure and safe?
If not please tell me the other way?

Answer 1

What appears at the right side of the “:” in a header is mostly free. You have to take into account character set restriction in HTTP, and possible carriage returns in the JSON value (you know, headers of more than one line have a specific syntax). If your JSON examples are relatively simple, then I see no problem in that. It is just another way of organizing the actual value of a header line.