application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data?

user_49407 0
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In HTTP there are two ways to POST data: application/x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data. I understand that most browsers are only able to upload files if multipart/form-data is used. Is there any additional guidance when to use one of the encoding types in an API context (no browser involved)? This might e.g. be based on:

  • data size
  • existence of non-ASCII characters
  • existence on (unencoded) binary data
  • the need to transfer additional data (like filename)

I basically found no formal guidance on the web regarding the use of the different content-types so far.

post http-headers http
7 Answers

If you need to use Content-Type=x-www-urlencoded-form then DO NOT use FormDataCollection as parameter: In asp.net Core 2+ FormDataCollection has no default constructors which is required by Formatters. Use IFormCollection instead:

 public IActionResult Search([FromForm]IFormCollection type)
    {
        return Ok();
    }
user_58169800

In my case the issue was that the response contentType was application/x-www-form-urlencoded but actually it contained a JSON as the body of the request. Django when we access request.data in Django it cannot properly converted it so access request.body.

Refer this answer for better understanding: Exception: You cannot access body after reading from request's data stream

user_61047830
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