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MIME Types

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard that specifies encoding for different types of content so they can be transmitted over email and the web. It allows non-text content like attachments and text in different character sets. MIME was originally meant for email but is now also used for specifying content types in other communication protocols. Common content types defined in MIME include text, images, audio, video, and applications.

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63 views2 pages

MIME Types

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard that specifies encoding for different types of content so they can be transmitted over email and the web. It allows non-text content like attachments and text in different character sets. MIME was originally meant for email but is now also used for specifying content types in other communication protocols. Common content types defined in MIME include text, images, audio, video, and applications.

Uploaded by

Rosh_Mi
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MIME types

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the
format of e-mail to support:

 Text in character sets other than ASCII


 Non-text attachments
 Message bodies with multiple parts
 Header information in non-ASCII character sets

MIME's use, however, has grown beyond describing the content of e-mail to describing content
type in general, including for the web (see Internet media type).

Virtually all human-written Internet e-mail and a fairly large proportion of automated e-mail is
transmitted via SMTP in MIME format. Internet e-mail is so closely associated with the SMTP
and MIME standards that it is sometimes called SMTP/MIME e-mail.[1]

The content types defined by MIME standards are also of importance outside of e-mail, such as
in communication protocols like HTTP for the World Wide Web. HTTP requires that data be
transmitted in the context of e-mail-like messages, although the data most often is not actually e-
mail.

MIME is specified in six linked RFC memoranda: RFC 2045, RFC 2046, RFC 2047, RFC 4288,
RFC 4289 and RFC 2049, which together define the specifications.

MIME
What is mime?

MIME is a standard for describing different types of information This was originally meant to be
used to specify encoding for different types of information into text. This made it possible to
send them as e-mail.

The standard MIME is also used in other types of communication where there is a need for
specifying which type of information is used. This could be your local operating system or a web
server.

How do I read MIME in my mail?

Mime is just a specification. Normally the information is encoded with some other standard
format. When decoded it regains it original shape.

To be able to read the file you need an application that can handle the attached file. If two files, a
word document and a image is sent by email they would both get encoded as mime. Upon
receiving these files there need to be an application associated with each file type. Microsoft
word or maybe another word processor would be associated with the word document making it
possible to read the file. Photoshop or another image viewer would be associated with the image.

Normally the conversion from MIME to files is handled by the e-mail application. When the file
is stored on disk it is up to the operating system to map an application to file type.

MIME types
Mime-types was originally defined in RFC 1341. After that a series of improvment has been
made. Some of this can be found in RFC 1521 and RFC 1522.

This is our collection of different types...

 Application
 Audio
 Image
 Message
 Multipart
 Text
 Video

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