5.3. Interoperability with Web Applications

5.3. Interoperability with Web Applications

Many web applications use the "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" method for returning data from forms. This format is quite compact, for example:

name=Xavier+Xantico&verdict=Yes&colour=Blue&happy=sad&Utf%F6r=Send

However, there is no opportunity to label the enclosed data with a content type, apply a charset, or use other encoding mechanisms.

Many form-interpreting programs (primarily web browsers) now implement and generate multipart/form-data, but a receiving application might also need to support the "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" format.