Message Type Text versus Binary

Hi @Robert . Apologies for leaving this post so long, just noticing it now.

Which API(s) are you using? Then I can point to some specific examples.

I don't know if any API has a "default" of binary payload. I think you need to specify what type of message you're creating when you first create it to publish.

I'd recommend against using SDTMap and SDTStream as these don't play with with our open protocol support: AMQP, MQTT, REST. It's a proprietary encoding which means you'll need Solace libraries to decode them.

If sending text data (XML, CSV, JSON, etc.) I'd recommend using TextMessages. (which are actually an SDT with a single text field... you can see some extra bytes at the start of the payload if trying to parse a TextMessage as just plain binary). TextMessages will automagically get converted appropriately when receiving from other protocols.

To check what type a message is, it depends on the API. I'm familiar with JCSMP mostly, and the common pattern is something like:

if (msg instanceof TextMessage) {
    String payload = ((TextMessage)msg).getText();
    // blahblhablha
} else if (msg instanceof BytesMesssage) {
    byte[] payload = ((BytesMessage)msg).getData();
    // blahb lahb
} else {
    // something else
}

N.B. I'm typing this out from memory, but I think that's correct. Something like that.

For JavaScript, check out message.getType() and the MessageType class. https://docs.solace.com/API-Developer-Online-Ref-Documentation/js

I think there are other ways for other APIs.

For the REST Messaging API, I think you need to specify that it's text specifically, or it sends it as a plain binary payload. For example:

curl http://localhost:9000/TOPIC/solace/samples/rest/hello/test -d 'hello world binary'

Sends as binary payload. But:

curl http://localhost:9000/TOPIC/solace/samples/rest/hello/test -d 'hello world text' -H 'content-type: text'
 -- OR --
curl http://localhost:9000/TOPIC/solace/samples/rest/hello/test -d '{"hello world": "json"}' -H 'content-type: application/json'

Send as TextMessages. See here: https://docs.solace.com/API/RESTMessagingPrtl/Solace-REST-Message-Encoding.htm#_Ref393980206

Hope this helps!