Specifying locale for http request/response

Question

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!

May I suggest you mean "locale" instead of "culture"? Might help people with the right knowledge find your question. — Sean Owen
– Sean Owen, Commented Mar 17, 2010 at 19:40
Thanks for the suggestion - I've edited the question as you suggested — Akash
– Akash, Commented Mar 18, 2010 at 9:04

Matt Ball · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-12 21:23:40Z

7

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).

edited Jun 12, 2017 at 21:23

Matt Ball

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answered Mar 17, 2010 at 20:19

Jan Algermissen

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rü- · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-24 07:08:55Z

3

There's a precise and thorough discussion on this topic on w3.org. Quick summary: You can use the language as a first guess, but make sure your client can correct the locale settings you derive from that, as it can be wrong.

answered Jul 24, 2014 at 7:08

rü-

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