What's flowing across the web? Cloudflare Radar now visualizes content types and API traffic!
Hi everyone, it's me, Shii-chan! Today Cloudflare Radar got a nice little update, so let me tell you all about it.
Cloudflare Changelog
developers.cloudflare.com
What was announced?
According to Cloudflare's Changelog, Cloudflare Radar added two new charts to its traffic page. One shows the "content type distribution" of HTTP responses, and the other shows the "API traffic share." Now you can look at what's actually flowing across the internet in much more detail.
The story so far
Up to now, Radar's traffic page could already show things like the bot vs. human split, but it couldn't tell you what kind of content was being served. HTML? Images? JSON? That breakdown is finally visible now.
What changes
With the content type chart, you can see at a glance how responses break down by type. And you can filter by human, bot, or all traffic, so you can even ask questions like "what are the bots fetching?" The API traffic chart tells you what share of dynamic requests look API-related.
Dive Deep
Content types are grouped into 16 categories: HTML, Images, JSON, JavaScript, CSS, Plain Text, Fonts, XML, YAML, Video, Audio, Markdown, Documents, Binary, Serialization, and Other. Pretty granular!
The API traffic share counts non-cacheable HTTP requests whose responses are JSON or XML with a 200 status code as "API-related." In other words, it picks out the API-like calls from within dynamic traffic.
Both metrics are available through Radar's API endpoints, so you can pull them into your own tooling too.
Wrap-up
- Cloudflare Radar's traffic page added two charts: "content type distribution" and "API traffic share"
- Content types fall into 16 categories, filterable by human, bot, or all traffic
- API traffic counts non-cacheable, JSON/XML, status-200 requests as API-related
- Both are available via the API, making it great for anyone who loves tracking and observing internet trends
