Content Types

Restish separates two decisions:

• Request encoding: -c or --rsh-content-type controls how a request body is sent.
• Response rendering: -o controls how a decoded response is printed.

HTTP Accept headers ask the server for a representation. Output formats do not change what the server sends.

Built-In Types

restish doctor lists the registered content type aliases. Use JSON doctor output when you need MIME types, suffixes, and quality values:

restish doctor
restish doctor -o json

JSON-family structured types with +json, such as application/problem+json, decode as JSON. Structured suffixes win before broad wildcards, so a response labeled text/example+json is treated as JSON rather than plain text/* unless an exact handler is registered for that MIME type. XML-family media types with +xml, such as application/soap+xml, use the XML handler.

Request Encoding

JSON is the default request body encoding:

restish post -c json api.rest.sh/post 'string: hello'
restish post -c yaml api.rest.sh/post 'string: hello'
restish post -c form api.rest.sh/login 'username: alice, password: secret'
printf 'hello from docs\n' > upload.txt
restish post -c multipart api.rest.sh/uploads 'description: docs, file: @upload.txt'

Shorthand builds a logical value. The selected encoder turns that value into JSON, YAML, CBOR, form data, multipart parts, text, XML, NDJSON, or raw bytes. Use -c text for plain text request bodies; SSE responses still decode from text/event-stream.

For media types that are already textual payload formats, prefer @file when the file should become the whole request body:

restish post -c xml api.example.test/webdav @propfind.xml
restish post -c ndjson api.example.test/logs @events.ndjson

XML request bodies accept raw string or @file input. NDJSON accepts raw string or @file input, and still encodes structured arrays as one JSON record per line.

For multipart bodies, @path creates a file part and fails locally if the file cannot be read. Use @@value when a text field should start with a literal @.

Response Decoding

Restish decodes supported structured responses before filtering and formatting:

restish api.rest.sh/formats/json
restish api.rest.sh/formats/yaml -o yaml
restish api.rest.sh/formats/cbor
restish api.rest.sh/problem --rsh-ignore-status-code

If stdout is redirected and no filter or output format is selected, Restish writes the response body bytes instead of reformatting them. Choose -o json, -o yaml, or another format when you want Restish to decode and re-render the body; redirected rendered output is pretty by default.

Accept Header

Use Accept when you need to influence server-side content negotiation:

restish -H 'Accept: application/json' api.rest.sh/formats/json
restish -H 'Accept: image/png' api.rest.sh/images/png

Restish generates an Accept header from registered content types, ordered by quality and deduplicated by canonical MIME type. Defaults prefer JSON and vendor JSON first, then other text-friendly structured formats such as NDJSON and YAML, before binary structured formats such as CBOR, MessagePack, and Ion. That ordering is least surprising in terminals, scripts, logs, and tools. Binary formats are still supported; request one explicitly with -H, a profile, or an endpoint that only returns that format when the API and your workflow benefit from it. If a plugin registers the same MIME type later, that later registration is the effective one.

Use -o when you want Restish to transform a decoded response after it arrives:

restish api.rest.sh/formats/cbor > response.cbor
restish api.rest.sh/formats/cbor -o json > response.json

Compression

Restish handles common HTTP content encodings before response decoding:

restish api.rest.sh/gzip
restish api.rest.sh/deflate
restish api.rest.sh/brotli

Raw output uses the body exposed after HTTP content-encoding decompression. It is not a capture of compressed wire bytes.

Plugins

Content plugins can add request encoders, response decoders, and output formatters. Use restish doctor -o json and restish plugin list to confirm what your current binary can handle.

Related Pages

• Input and Shorthand
• Output
• Output Formats
• Plugins