[wp-hackers] Help with the API on WordPress.org?

[Otto]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Mike Schinkel <mikeschinkel at gmail.com> wrote:
>  "Peter Westwood" <peter.westwood at ftwr.co.uk> wrote:
>>> Serialised data is the standard response type I would use with php.
>
> Actually, there are standards and then there are "Standards."
>
> You were referring to the format you use by convention for your convenience
> and which is also arguably a defacto-standard because of the functional
> inclusion in PHP. I was referring to the "MIME Type" standards (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type) as set forth the the
> Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and as recognized as
> authoritative by the W3C and all other Internet-oriented standards bodies.
> You can see the list of recognized MIME types here:
>
>   http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/
>
> After a quick review I don't see anything that mentioned serialized PHP so
> it appears that it's use as a representation for HTTP request responses has
> not established any widespread use, at least not by anyone significant who
> values web standards.

The MIME type of application/vnd.php.serialized is the one I see used
in most places where serialized PHP is used. It's a data structure,
similar to JSON in terms of scope and usage.

-Otto