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Streamable HTTP: Content-Type handling is order dependent and accepts invalid values

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@jayzuccarelli is already working on this.

Since Oct 12, 2026.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
76/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
python
Domain
backend-api-design, security

Research direction

Start by reading the content-type checks in src/mcp/server/transport_security.py and src/mcp/server/streamable_http.py, then trace the corresponding modern transport check. Add or update tests for the listed Content-Type values, including parameters and comma-separated values. Done means only application/json, with optional parameters, is accepted consistently across transports.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug v1 v2
Initial Checks
Release line

2.x (current stable)

Description

The Content-Type header:

  • accepts values that are not JSON media types. application/json, text/plain is accepted and the request is executed, although a comma cannot appear inside a media type. On the modern transport application/jsonx is accepted as well
  • The answer depends on order. application/json, text/plain is accepted while text/plain, application/json is rejected, so the same invalid value gets opposite answers.

The first check is a prefix test in the middleware:

# src/mcp/server/transport_security.py
return content_type is not None and content_type.lower().startswith("application/json")

The second splits the value on ; and , and compares the result:

# src/mcp/server/streamable_http.py
content_type_parts = [part.strip() for part in content_type.split(";")[0].split(",")]
return any(part == CONTENT_TYPE_JSON for part in content_type_parts)

The second check rejects application/jsonx. The 2.x modern transport has no equivalent, so it accepts that value.

For reference, the TypeScript SDK answers 415 for application/json, text/plain and for application/jsonx, and mcp-go answers 400 for both.

Reproduction

Against a server started with stateless_http=True, so no session handshake is needed:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8901/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json, text/plain' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"ping","arguments":{}}}'

Observed: 200 with a normal JSON-RPC result, and the tool's handler runs.

Content-Type sent Expected handshake transport (1.x and 2.x) modern transport (2.x only)
application/json accepted 200 200
application/json; charset=utf-8 accepted 200 200
application/json, text/plain rejected 200, body executed 200, body executed
application/jsonx rejected 415 200, body executed
text/plain, application/json rejected 400 400
text/plain rejected 400 400

For modern transport calls were sent with MCP-Protocol-Version: 2026-07-28 plus the Mcp-Method and Mcp-Name headers.

Fix

Parse the media type, the segment before the first ;, and compare it exactly to application/json. Parameters keep working, so application/json; charset=utf-8 is unaffected, while the values above are rejected.

Python & MCP Python SDK
Reproduced on the 2.x line (`2.2.0`, `2.3.0`) and the 1.x line (`1.30.0`)
Dominant language
Python
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
10h 37m
Merged PRs (30d)
38

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