Media type

A media type (formerly known as 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 2045 in November 1996 as a part of 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 purpose. A media type (formerly known as 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 2045 in November 1996 as a part of 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 purpose. 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: The currently registered types are: application, audio, example, font, image, message, model, multipart, text and video. An unofficial top-level name in common use is called chemical. 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 indicating the character encoding.