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I have a ReSTful web service which needs to parse locale-sensitive data from the request. This data could either be in an XML body or part of the query string. Is there any acepted way of determining which locale the data is being sent in (and by extension the locale in which the response should be sent)?
One option is simply to specify to the clients the locale in which all requests should be sent. A friendlier option seems to be to allow the client to specify the locale.
I've considered:
a) using the accept-language http header to encode this information.
b) using the xml:lang attribute for XML POSTs, and an extra field for query strings (e.g. ...&locale=en-GB)
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-accept-lang-locales warns of limitations in using the accept-language header, but most of the warnings seem to center around requests originating from browsers. In my case the requests will come from other applications.
All advice greatly appreciated!
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The HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header is defined by W3C in RFC 2616, as “the set of natural languages that are preferred as a response to the request”. It returns one or more languages in the header that tell the web server which language(s) the browser prefers to receive content assets in.
The user can change the Accept-Language header sent by the browser using the browser's preference settings. E.g., in Chrome, go to “Settings”, click on “Show advanced settings...”, scroll down to “Languages”, click on “Language and input settings...”, and then add languages and drag to order them.
The Accept-Language request HTTP header indicates the natural language and locale that the client prefers. The server uses content negotiation to select one of the proposals and informs the client of the choice with the Content-Language response header.
HTTP header fields are a list of strings sent and received by both the client program and server on every HTTP request and response. These headers are usually invisible to the end-user and are only processed or logged by the server and client applications.
Your immediate choice is Accept-Language and probably Accept-Charset. A further option is to used a database that maps the client IP to a geographic location (as far as possible). These databases have become quite good. I think, but they usually are not free (you need to pay).
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