What is content-type and datatype in an AJAX request?

Question

contentType is the type of data you're sending, so application/json; charset=utf-8 is a common one, as is application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8, which is the default.

dataType is what you're expecting back from the server: json, html, text, etc. jQuery will use this to figure out how to populate the success function's parameter.

If you're posting something like:

{"name":"John Doe"}

and expecting back:

{"success":true}

Then you should have:

var data = {"name":"John Doe"}
$.ajax({
    dataType : "json",
    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
    data : JSON.stringify(data),
    success : function(result) {
        alert(result.success); // result is an object which is created from the returned JSON
    },
});

If you're expecting the following:

<div>SUCCESS!!!</div>

Then you should do:

var data = {"name":"John Doe"}
$.ajax({
    dataType : "html",
    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
    data : JSON.stringify(data),
    success : function(result) {
        jQuery("#someContainer").html(result); // result is the HTML text
    },
});

One more - if you want to post:

name=John&age=34

Then don't stringify the data, and do:

var data = {"name":"John", "age": 34}
$.ajax({
    dataType : "html",
    contentType: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8", // this is the default value, so it's optional
    data : data,
    success : function(result) {
        jQuery("#someContainer").html(result); // result is the HTML text
    },
});

From the jQuery documentation - http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/

contentType When sending data to the server, use this content type.

dataType The type of data that you're expecting back from the server. If none is specified, jQuery will try to infer it based on the MIME type of the response

"text": A plain text string.

So you want contentType to be application/json and dataType to be text:

$.ajax({
    type : "POST",
    url : /v1/user,
    dataType : "text",
    contentType: "application/json",
    data : dataAttribute,
    success : function() {

    },
    error : function(error) {

    }
});

See http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/, there's mention of datatype and contentType there.

They are both used in the request to the server so the server knows what kind of data to receive/send.