Internet media type
An Internet media type is a standard identifier used on the Internet to indicate the type of data that a file contains.
Description
Common uses for Internet media types include:
- Email clients use them to identify attachment files
- Web browsers use them to determine how to display or output files that are not in HTML format
- Search engines use them to classify data files on the web
A media type is composed of a type, a subtype, and zero or more optional parameters (see Parameter (computing)).
For 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 indicating the character encoding.
Official registry
The IANA manages the official registry of media types.
The identifiers were originally defined in RFC 2046, and were called MIME types because they referred to the non-ASCII parts of email messages that were composed using the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) specification. They are also sometimes referred to as Content-types.
Protocols supported
Their use has expanded from email sent through SMTP, to other protocols such as HTTP, RTP and SIP.
See also
External links
- Internet media type @ Wikipedia
