application/*
application/xml
File extensions: .xml
Extensible Markup Language — used by SOAP, feeds, and legacy APIs.
What is application/xml?
application/xml identifies an XML document. SOAP web services, RSS/Atom feeds, SVG images, Android layouts, and many enterprise APIs still return this content type. XML remains common wherever schema validation and namespaces matter more than payload size.
Typical usage
SOAP APIs, RSS/Atom feeds (though those use their own subtypes), enterprise integrations, config files.
Common gotchas
text/xml is a legacy variant with different charset defaults (US-ASCII vs UTF-8 for application/xml). Modern services should prefer application/xml.
HTTP header example
Response header
Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8Reference
RFC 7303