The API uses XML or JSON for requests as well as responses. This is governed by the parameter data-format that is to be passed in every request. It can be either XML (the default) or JSON. All XML documents sent to and returned from the service should be XML 1.0, encoded as UTF-8. In case of JSON, all strings are encoded in UTF-8 format. Date and times are represented as: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss e.g. 10 August 2008, 1:45 PM will be represented by 2008-08-10T13:45:00. Booleans are to be represented as strings true and false. Booleans in database columns are stored as 't' for true and 'f' for false.

When the format is XML, property names and their values are returned as XML elements and its contents respectively. In case of JSON, they become the object property name and value respectively.