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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T03:09:27+00:00

I’m designing a RESTful API and in an attempt to be descriptive and make

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I’m designing a RESTful API and in an attempt to be descriptive and make documentation clearer I want to declare my content-type http header as follows:

Content-Type: application/vnd.mycorp.mydatatype+json

where mycorp is an identifier unique to my corporation and mydatatype is unique to each data type. An example would be:

Content-Type: application/vnd.ford.car+json

{
"manufactured_year": 2000
, "color": "blue"
, "hp": 160
, "model" "Focus"
, "type": "sedan"
}

This content-type would be required in order for a POST to be valid and would be sent as a part of a response. It seems to me like a nice way to define rules for what should be inside the payload.

I can’t seem to find a good resource on whether this is a good idea or if it is even allowed by IETF standards.

So, question is: Which is more feasible, application/vnd.mycorp.mydatatype+json or just application/json?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It’s allowed, definitely. Whether it’s a good idea is another story.

    My rule of thumb is that it’s a primary data format that’s useful across a lot of things, needs to be identified on its own, and you need to interoperate across many applications, definitely give it a media type.

    However, if it’s just a message in your API among many, and it’s only good for one resource (or one resource “type”), just use application/json.

    YMMV, of course.

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