3.3. Request/Response Types

The Rackspace Cloud Monitoring API supports both the JSON and XML data serialization formats. The request format is specified using the Content-Type header and is required for operations that have a request body. The response format can be specified in requests using the Accept header. Note that it is possible for a response to be serialized using a format different from the request (see example below). If no response format is specified, JSON is the default.

Table 3.2. Response Types
Format	Accept Header	Default
JSON	application/json	Yes
JSONP*	application/json	No
XML	application/xml	No

*JSONP is the same as JSON except that the X-Auth-Token header is replaced with an HTTP query parameter with the same name. An additional HTTP query parameter JSONP indicates the method name to wrap the JSON response in.

In the request example below, notice that Content-Type is set to application/json, but application/xml is requested via the Accept header:

Example 3.5. JSON Request with Headers

POST https://monitoring.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/<your_account_number>/entities/enHBMKJpe6/test-check/
X-Auth-Token: <your_auth_token>
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: application/xml
'{ "details" : {  },
  "label" : "Website check 1",
  "monitoring_zones_poll" : [ "mzdfw" ],
  "period" : "60",
  "target_alias" : "default",
  "timeout" : 30,
  "type" : "remote.ping"
}'

Therefore an XML response format is returned:

Example 3.6. XML Response with Headers

<checks_data>
    <check_data>
        <timestamp>1332542815237</timestamp>
        <monitoring_zone_id>mzdfw</monitoring_zone_id>
        <available>false</available>
        <status>cnt=5,avail=0,min=-nan,max=-nan,avg=-nan</status>
        <metrics>
            <average>
                <type>n</type>
                <data/>
            </average>
            <minimum>
                <type>n</type>
                <data/>
            </minimum>
            <available>
                <type>n</type>
                <data>0.000000000000e+00</data>
            </available>
            <maximum>
                <type>n</type>
                <data/>
            </maximum>
            <count>
                <type>i</type>
                <data>5</data>
            </count>
        </metrics>
    </check_data>
</checks_data>

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