HTML: MIME Type

This HTML tutorial explains the basics of MIME Type with syntax and examples.

Description

A MIME type (or media type) is an identifier for file formats or format contents on the Internet. MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions and all MIME types are officially maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). MIME types are traditionally written in all lowercase, but MIME types are actually case in-sensitive.

HTML elements such as the <a>, <embed>, <link>, <object> and <style> tags will use a MIME type in the type attribute.

Syntax

The syntax for a MIME type is:

type/subtype

Parameters or Arguments

type

The type is a string value. Here is the list of currently registered types for MIME type:

type	Description
application	Represents any type of binary data
audio	Represents any type of audio file
example	Represents any type of media used for "examples"
font	Represents any type of font file
image	Represents any type of image including animated gif's, but it does not include video files
message	Represents any type of message file
model	Represents any type of model file
multipart	Represents documents that are broken into multiparts with different MIME types in each part
text	Represents any type of text data that is human readable
video	Represents any type of video file

subtype

The subtype is a string value that consists of the media format such as html or javascript, for example.

Example

Here are examples of some of the more commonly used MIME types:

application/ecmascript
application/javascript
application/json
application/octet-stream
application/ogg
application/pdf
application/x-shockwave-flash
application/sql
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
application/xml
application/zip

audio/mpeg
audio/ogg
audio/wave
audio/webm

image/gif
image/jpeg
image/png
image/svg+xml

multipart/form-data
multipart/byteranges

text/css
text/csv
text/html
text/javascript
text/plain
text/xml

video/mp4
video/ogg
video/webm