How do I find the mime-type of a file with php

Question

Ok  so I have an index php file which has to process many different file types   how do I guess the filetype based on the REQUEST URI   If I request http   site image jpg  and all requests redirect through index php  which looks like this   lt  php    include   www site    SERVER  REQUEST URI       gt    How would I make that work correctly   Should I test based on the extension of the file requested  or is there a way to get the filetype

User · Answer

if you re only dealing with images you can use the  getimagesize    1  function which contains all sorts of info about the image  including the type   A more general approach would be to use the FileInfo extension from PECL  The PHP documentation for this extension can be found at  http   us php net manual en ref fileinfo php  Some people have serious complaints about that extension    so if you run into serious issues or cannot install the extension for some reason you might want to check out the deprecated function mime content type

User · Answer

If you run Linux and have the extension you could simply read the MIME type from  etc mime types by making a hash array  You can then store that in memory and simply call the MIME by array key            Helper function to extract all mime types from the default Linux  etc mime types     function get mime types          mime types   array        if           file exists   etc mime types    amp  amp            fh   fopen   etc mime types    r        false                 while    line   fgets  fh       false                if   trim  line     substr  line  0  1           continue               mime type   preg split    t     rtrim  line                if                   is array  mime type   amp  amp                  isset  mime type 0    amp  amp   mime type 0   amp  amp                  isset  mime type 1    amp  amp   mime type 1                                  foreach  explode       mime type 1   as  ext                         mime types  ext     mime type 0                                                     fclose  fh             return  mime types

User · Answer

According to the php manual  the finfo-file function is best way to do this   However  you will need to install the FileInfo PECL extension   If the extension is not an option  you can use the outdated mime content type function

User · Answer

If you are sure you re only ever working with images  you can check out the getimagesize   exif imagetype   PHP function  which attempts to return the image mime-type   If you don t mind external dependencies  you can also check out the excellent getID3 library which can determine the mime-type of many different file types   Lastly  you can check out the mime content type   function - but it has been deprecated for the Fileinfo PECL extension

User · Answer

The mime of any file on your server can be gotten with this   lt  php function get mime  file path      finfo   new finfo FILEINFO MIME TYPE      type     finfo- gt file file path       mime   get mime  path to file ext

User · Answer

mime content type   is deprecated  so you won t be able to count on it working in the future  There is a  fileinfo  PECL extension  but I haven t heard good things about it   If you are running on a  nix server  you can do the following  which has worked fine for me    file   escapeshellarg   filename     mime   shell exec  file -bi      file    filename should probably include the absolute path

User · Answer

I actually got fed up by the lack of standard MIME sniffing methods in PHP  Install fileinfo    Use deprecated functions    Oh these work  but only for images  I got fed up of it  so I did some research and found the WHATWG Mimesniffing spec - I believe this is still a draft spec though   Anyway  using this specification  I was able to implement a mimesniffer in PHP  Performance is not an issue  In fact on my humble machine  I was able to open and sniff thousands of files before PHP timed out   Here is the MimeReader class   require once  MimeReader php      mime   new MimeReader  lt YOUR FILE PATH gt     mime type string    mime- gt getType            image jpeg  etc

User · Answer

function get mime  file      if  function exists  finfo file           finfo   finfo open FILEINFO MIME TYPE      return mime type ala mimetype extension      mime   finfo file  finfo   file       finfo close  finfo       return  mime      else if  function exists  mime content type          return mime content type  file       else if   stristr ini get  disable functions     shell exec             http   stackoverflow com a 134930 1593459      file   escapeshellarg  file        mime   shell exec  file -bi      file       return  mime      else       return false          For me  nothing of this does work - mime content type is deprecated  finfo is not installed  and shell exec is not allowed

User · Answer

i got very good results using a user function from  http   php net manual de function mime-content-type php    john dot howard at prismmg dot com 26-Oct-2009 03 43    function get mime type  filename   mimePath       etc           which doesnt use finfo  exec or deprecated function  works well also with remote ressources

User · Answer

mime content type   appears to be the way to go  notwithstanding the above comments saying it is deprecated  It is not  -- or at least this incarnation of mime content type   is not deprecated  according to http   php net manual en function mime-content-type php  It is part of the FileInfo extension  but the PHP documentation now tells us it is enabled by default as of PHP 5 3 0

User · Answer

You can use finfo to accomplish this as of PHP 5 3    lt  php  info   new finfo FILEINFO MIME TYPE   echo  info- gt file  myImage jpg       prints  image jpeg    The FILEINFO MIME TYPE flag is optional  without it you get a more verbose string for some files   apparently some image types will return size and colour depth information   Using the FILEINFO MIME flag returns the mime-type and encoding if available  e g  image png  charset binary or text x-php  charset us-ascii   See this site for more info

User · Answer

I haven t used it  but there s a PECL extension for getting a file s mimetype   The official documentation for it is in the manual   Depending on your purposes  a file extension can be ok  but it s not incredibly reliable since it s so easily changed

User · Answer

If you are working with Images only and you need mime type  e g  for headers   then this is the fastest and most direct answer    file    path to image jpg    image mime   image type to mime type exif imagetype  file      It will output true image mime type even if you rename your image file

[php] How do I find the mime-type of a file with php?

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