Reserved for use as a placeholder in examples showing how to use MIME types. Other common examples include application/pdf, application/pkcs8, and application/zip.Īudio or music data. Generic binary data (or binary data whose true type is unknown) is application/octet-stream.
The discrete types currently registered with the IANA are: applicationĪny kind of binary data that doesn't fall explicitly into one of the other types Įither data that will be executed or interpreted in some way or binary data that requires a specific application or category of application to use. There are two classes of type: discrete and multipart.ĭiscrete types are types which represent a single file or medium, such as a single text or music file, or a single video.Ī multipart type is one which represents a document that's comprised of multiple component parts, each of which may have its own individual MIME type or, a multipart type may encapsulate multiple files being sent together in one transaction.įor example, multipart MIME types are used when attaching multiple files to an email. The parameter values can be case-sensitive. MIME types are case-insensitive but are traditionally written in lowercase. To specify a UTF-8 text file, the MIME type text/plain charset=UTF-8 is used. If no charset is specified, the default is ASCII ( US-ASCII) unless overridden by the user agent's settings. A MIME type always has both a type and a subtype, never just one or the other.Īn optional parameter can be added to provide additional details: type/subtype parameter=valueįor example, for any MIME type whose main type is text, you can add the optional charset parameter to specify the character set used for the ics) files.Įach type has its own set of possible subtypes. The subtype identifies the exact kind of data of the specified type the MIME type represents.įor example, for the MIME type text, the subtype might be plain (plain text), html ( HTML source code), or calendar (for iCalendar/. The type represents the general category into which the data type falls, such as video or text. No whitespace is allowed in a MIME type: type/subtype A MIME type comprises these strings concatenated with a slash ( /). A simplest MIME type consists of a type and a subtype.