Techniques for transmitting data over a network in a representational state transfer (REST) application are provided. A request for data from a client computing device in a representational state transfer (REST) application is received and a wire protocol is selected based on user input from a plurality of wire protocols that will be used to transmit one or more objects to be returned by the request. The selected wire protocol is indicated to the client computing device and the one or more objects are transmitted to the client computing device using the determined wire protocol.