MIME / Media Type

A media type (formerly known as a MIME type) is a two-part identifier for file formats and format contents transmitted on the Internet. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the official authority for the standardization and publication of these classifications. Media types were originally defined in Request for Comments RFC 2045 (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies (Nov 1996) in November 1996 as a part of the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) specification, for denoting type of email message content and attachments; hence the original name, MIME type. Media types are also used by other internet protocols such as HTTP and document file formats such as HTML for similar purposes.

--Media Types (formerly MIME Types | from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Naming

A media type consists of a type and a subtype, which is further structured into a tree. A Media type can optionally define a suffix and parameters.

mime-type = type "/" [tree "."] subtype ["+" suffix]* [";" parameter];

As an example, an HTML file might be designated text/html; charset=UTF-8. In this example, text is the type, html is the subtype, and charset=UTF-8 is an optional parameter.

Types, subtypes, and suffixes are case-insensitive. Parameter values are usually case-sensitive, but may be interpreted in a case-insensitive manner, depending on its use.

Types

As of November 1996, the IANA maintains a registry of media types: application, audio, image, message, multipart, text, and video. By December 2020 that list has increased to include these types: font, example, model.

Common Examples

References

Web Links

Note Links