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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Content negotiation

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In software engineering, content negotiation means: Selecting a representation of a resource, such as its format or language, using information exchanged between client and server.

In Turkish: içerik uzlaşımı

How it is used

Used in HTTP APIs and multilingual sites. A server may be unable to provide the client's preferred representation.

Example sentences

  1. The server used content negotiation to select JSON because the client listed it as an acceptable format.

    The representation is chosen from client preferences and available server formats.

  2. Our cache varies responses by language to support content negotiation correctly.

    Different negotiated languages must not accidentally share the same cached representation.

Common collocations

  • HTTP content negotiation
  • content negotiation headers
  • HTTPHypertext Transfer Protocol: the set of rules that browsers and servers use to send requests and responses across the web.
  • headerA name and value pair sent with an HTTP request or response that carries extra information, such as Content-Type, Authorization or Cache-Control.

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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