Accept-Language: (Request)
Introduction#
Accept-Language tells the server what language (such as English) does the client accept.
Syntax#
- Accept-Language: Language;QualityFactor
- Accept-Language: Language;QualityFactor, Language;QualityFactor, …
- Accept-Language: *
Parameters#
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Language | What language is acceptable. |
| QualityFactor | The quality factor in the format ;q=0.8 (optional) |
| * | Match any language |
Remarks#
Accept-Language takes a number of languages and includes an optional preference for which one the server should use. The language is one from the list
of available at IANA Language Subtag Registry page. For example en is English, and en-US is USA English.
The language is separated by commas with an optional quality factor (using a ;q=) that is
used the clients preference for using this language. The quality factor has a value from 0 to 1 with the higher the number the more preference for that language.
If this header is not included then the client will accept any language.
The server uses Content-Language to inform the client what langauge it is using.
English only
Request:”https://example.com”
GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0 Accept: text/html Accept-Language: en Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: keep-alive
The client will only accept Content-Language of English.
US English or basic english
Request:”https://example.com”
GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0 Accept: text/html Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: keep-alive
The client will accept English but prefers US English.
US English or basic english
Request:”https://example.com”
GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0 Accept: text/html Accept-Language: da, en-gb;q=0.8, en;q=0.7 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: keep-alive
The client prefers Danish, but will also accept British English, or if that’s not available basic English.
Match any language
Request:”https://example.com”
GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0 Accept: text/html Accept-Language: * Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: keep-alive
The client will accept any language.