Which MIME type to use for a binary file that s specific to my program

Question

My program uses its own binary file type  so I assume I can t use MIME type text plain  as it is not a 7-bit ASCII file   Should I just call it  application myappname

User · Answer

According to the spec RFC 2045  Syntax of the Content-Type Header Field application myappname is not allowed  but application x-myappname is allowed and sounds most appropriate for you re application to me

User · Answer

mimetype headers are recognised by the browser for the purpose of a  fast  possible identifying a handler to use the downloaded file as target  for example  PDF would be downloaded and your Adobe Reader program would be executed with the path of the PDF file as an argument   If your needs are to write a browser extension to handle your downloaded file  through your operation-system  or you simply want to make you project a more  professional looking  go ahead and select a unique mimetype for you to use  it would make no difference since the operation-system would have no handle to open it with  some browsers has few bundled-plugins  for example new Google Chrome versions has a built-in PDF-reader    if you want to make sure the file would be downloaded have a look at this answer  https   stackoverflow com a 34758866 257319  if you want to make your file type especially organised  it might be worth adding a few letters in the first few bytes of the file  for example  every JPG has this at it s file start     if you can afford a jump of 4 or 8 bytes it could be very helpful for you in the rest of the way

User · Answer

I d recommend application octet-stream as RFC2046 says  The  octet-stream  subtype is used to indicate that a body contains arbitrary binary data  and  The recommended action for an implementation that receives an  application octet-stream  entity is to simply offer to put the data in a file         I think that way you will get better handling from arbitrary programs  that might barf when encountering your unknown mime type

User · Answer

you could perhaps use   application x-binary  what is MIME types  list of mime types  see explanation

[mime-types] Which MIME type to use for a binary file that's specific to my program?

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