structured-headers: Has JSON been considered?

[evert]

This is a question I got after publishing a first stab at an implementation. Was JSON considered as an alternative for this?

At least some reasons why I can think of why it wouldn't be good are:

• It doesn't encode binary data
• It's not as aesthetically pleasing, especially considering how HTTP headers generally 'look'.

However, parsers are everywhere and JSON has some properties that structured-headers doesn't have, such as deeper nesting, encoding null and it also solves #534

[mnot]

Yes - there's a long history behind that, and we originally had a JSON-based approach.

Besides the reason you mention, there was a lot of discomfort around the imprecision of numbers in JSON, and also about enabling arbitrary nesting of data structures.

[evert]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm gonna try to dig into the discussions