Open application/hal+json response inline in browser instead of downloading it

Question

I would like to open "application/hal+json" response inline in my Chrome browser. The problem is that the Chrome browser doesn't recognize the HAL response and downloads it. Before I always used the JSON view extension for Chrome for checking my JSON response. But since swapping to HAL it immediately downloads my response so I cannot review it anymore.

Answer 1

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but installing the HAL Browser from your web server will convert HAL to HTML for viewing your application/hal+json responses inline. It's particularly nice because it makes the links navigable and also links to the relation documentation (if the relation name is a URI).

Oddly enough, my Chrome sends an Accept header of /;q=0.8 so it falls back to anything the server sends it. I wonder if you're running a different version of Chrome than I am. I'm on v30.0.1599.101.

Answer 2

For Chrome: I just ran into a nice solution myself. I hope answering here will help some other people who run into the same problem... Installing this 'application/...+json|+xml as inline' chrome extension solved it nicely. I am now able to review my server response again as normal.

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For FireFox: Install the extension called JSONView. After install go to extensions page (default: ctrl+shift+a) find the JSONView extension and go to options. There you can add "Alternate JSON content types" that should be opened as by the extension. Simply add application/hal+json to the input field and it will work:

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REST developer add-ons: Another solution can be to install a REST developer add-on. The advantage is that you can also change the http request verb (POST, GET, PATCH, PUT, DELETE) and custom set your request headers. A great REST plugin for Chrome is POSTMAN and a nice one for FireFox is RESTClient. But there are several other ones available.