[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 251871] New: JSON isn't implicitly treated as UTF-8

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=251871

            Bug ID: 251871
           Summary: JSON isn't implicitly treated as UTF-8
           Product: WebKit
           Version: Safari 16
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: Normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Layout and Rendering
          Assignee: webkit-unassigned at lists.webkit.org
          Reporter: webkit at aaroncarson.co.uk
                CC: bfulgham at webkit.org, simon.fraser at apple.com,
                    zalan at apple.com

Created attachment 464889

  --> https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=464889&action=review

Screenshot demonstrating Safari's behaviour with and without ;charset=utf-8

Hi! 

According to section 8 of RFC 8259[1], all JSON documents must be encoded using UTF-8 / Unicode.

If a JSON file is accessed directly within Safari (for example, an API endpoint is accessed), it uses the browser's default encoding (for me, it defaulted to `Western (ISO Latin 1)` to render it. This can lead to garbled text; I discovered this as an API endpoint I created contains two emoji characters which did not render correctly within Safari. In Chrome, it renders fine.

If the `Content-Type` HTTP header is set to `application/json;charset=utf-8`, it works fine in Safari. However, the inclusion of this is widely discouraged[2][3]. Not only that, IANA specifically call out that there is no `charset` parameter defined for the `application/json` media type[4].

So WebKit should automatically assume that `application/json` is in UTF-8 and render it as such. Otherwise, there will be more people who fall down a rabbit hole trying to work out what they've done wrong with character encoding when writing an API endpoint whilst using Safari!


[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8259#section-8
[2] https://github.com/request/request/issues/383
[3] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70250068/with-fastapi-how-to-add-charset-to-content-type-media-type-on-request-header#:~:text=Short%20answer,not%20be%20necessary.
[4] https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/json

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